Harry Potter and the Vampire Slayer
by Hawky21
Summary: AU after Ootp and set in Season 3 of BTVS. During the final battle with Voldemort, a seventeen year old Harry Potter is thrown into the Slayer dimension due to some unstable magic. There, Harry must accept that the fight against darkness will never be ove
1. The Best Laid Plans

**Yep, that's right folks, new story, and my first attempt at a crossover. It is Harry Potter/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story. It is canon up until Order of the Phoenix and is set at the beginning of season three of BTVS. The story will run in canon with season three until branching of and going AU after the season finishes. So, without further ado, read it, and review it to let me know what you think.**

**CHAPTER ONE:** _The Best Laid Plans._

The air was thick with magic. There were shouts and screams echoing through the room, screams of people fighting and dying. Inside the ministry atrium, hundreds of witches and wizards were colliding in an epic battle. Half were dressed in black robes with white masks, the other half were dressed in different colours, they didn't need to be colour coordinated, they all knew they were working together.

Harry Potter raised a shield against a flurry of attacks that came his way. Flashes of red, blue and purple lights crashed against Harry's gold shield, the shield did not budge though and instead absorbed the curses. None of those curses were deadly, only meant to harm on incapacitate him. The Death Eaters had orders not to kill Harry because that was supposed to be Voldemort's job. Harry was under no such obligation though and slashed downwards with his wand. A bright red flame appeared and charged toward three Death Eaters standing in front of him, turning all three into ashes. Harry winced slightly at the gruesome sight but had to shake it off quickly as another barrage of spells came toward him. Harry, not having enough time to bring up a shield, dived to the ground to avoid them. He was careful roll onto his front because he had a bag on his back that contained something that he couldn't break, something that would help him defeat Voldemort. From the floor, he cast a silent trip jinx at the feet of the Death Eater that had been attacking him. He then cast a silent stunner at the floor, catching the Death Eater unawares.

Harry jumped back to his feet, still in battle mode he immediately had to spin out the way of two more curses. Unfortunately, he span right into a yellow light. The spell hit him on his shoulder and Harry hissed in pain as the curse cut him deep in his right shoulder. The Death Eater that had thrown the curse raised his wand again, but before he could, a green light appeared from behind him and struck the Death Eater in his chest. Harry turned to see Remus Lupin standing behind him with his wand out.

"HARRY!" Remus yelled, "GET TO THE LIFT!"

Harry simply nodded and held onto his injured arm as he made his way to the ministry lift on the other end of the room. Remus walked behind Harry, covering him by keeping up a strong golden shield. No Death Eaters dared using a killing curse so close to the Chosen One, none of them wanted to feel the wrath of the Dark Lord. Harry got to the elevator, which conveniently was already open, and stumbled in; he was losing a dangerous amount of blood. Remus followed him in and slammed down on the button which closed the door. Luckily for the two, the doors were magically enforced as they heard several curses crash against the door.

"Let me have a look at that…" Remus began, grabbing Harry's arm. Harry pushed him away and took a step back.

"Don't bother Remus," Harry said, "It's dark magic, you're not going to be able to heal it."

"Harry, you're about to face Voldemort, you can't fight with that injury," Remus said, Harry just threw him a look which said, _no shit Sherlock_, Remus shook his head and continued, "What are you going to do?"

Harry sighed and with one sharp tug, he pulled off the sleeve of the black shirt he was wearing before wrapping it around his wound. "Just going to have to make do,"

"Harry, as I just said, you're about to duel Voldemort," Remus said seriously, "You can't just make do and expect to survive."

"If all goes according to plan there won't be much _duelling_ involved." Harry replied. He pulled the bag of his back and opened it. He pulled out three circular metal discs. All three had jagged edges and fit together like a puzzle. Carefully, Harry began to piece them together.

"I would feel so much better if you would activate that thing from here," Remus commented,

"No," Harry said instantly, "It has to be done close to Voldemort."

Remus just looked at the device Harry was holding with distrust, "Do you really think that will work against him Harry?" he asked slowly, "I mean…it does seem very…muggle…"

Harry didn't even look up and continued to put the machine together, "Not everything muggle is useless Remus. Believe me when I say this device is going to save the wizarding world."

"You didn't answer my question Harry,"

"I've tested it before," Harry explained, "It worked against all wizards and witches and most magical creatures, I can't see…"

"Harry!" Remus interrupted, "You're not answering my question." Harry sighed and finished putting together the device before standing up and finally looking Remus in the eye. "Will it work against Voldemort?"

Harry stared the man, his mentor in the eye, and realised that he couldn't lie to him. "I don't know."

Remus mouth hung open, "How can you not know?!"

"Voldemort's magic is different," Harry explained, "It's darker, more powerful than other witch or wizard on this earth, including me," Harry looked up at Remus with a grim look on his face, "I can't be sure if this device will work or not."

"So you're basing this whole plan on something you're not even sure you will work?" Remus questioned once more, just to be sure.

"It's way to late in the game to change the plan now Remus," Harry stated, "It will work, trust me."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I do what I always do," Harry replied, he saw Remus questioning look he added, "Wing it," Harry grinned and opened up his palm and produced a red flame. During the last two years his magic had changed and evolved. It was only when Voldemort attacked Hogsmeade and killed hundreds of innocent people he exploded in anger and set everything around him alight. After discovering his new ability he had spent all his time learning to control his new found ability and try to find out its limits. While he now had a decent amount of control of his power, he was still unsure of it's limits so he rarely used it in a fight, maybe now he would have too.

Remus groaned, "Harry you're going to be the death of me one day."

"Let's hope its one day a good few years from now," Harry replied with a grin before returning to his serious look, "He's in the Department of Mysteries."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Harry grinned, "My Voldemort detector says so,"

Remus shook his head and pressed the button on the lift. The elevator gave a lurch before it began to fall downwards. After a few seconds, the elevator stopped and the door opened, revealing the Department of Mysteries. Harry's thoughts immediately turned to Sirius, his dead godfather. He was now able to remember him fondly though, and not feel as much guilt as before. He learned that he had to move on in life, and as hard as that was at first, he realized that it was what Sirius would want more than anything.

"There's a good chance I'm not going to get out of this alive Remus," Harry said suddenly, Remus opened his mouth to object but Harry quickly stopped him, "Don't Remus, if I don't come out of this alive I'm going to need to you to pass on a message to Ron, Neville and Ginny. Tell them…tell them I said thank you...for everything…and make sure you put flowers on Hermione's grave for me every year, it's the least I can do for her."

"Harry…" Remus began, Harry looked back up at him and it looked like his face had aged twenty years in twenty seconds. Harry held up a hand, stopping him from continuing.

"Go back up to the battle Remus," Harry ordered, "This is something I need to do alone."

"Harry…" Remus began.

"No, Remus, just go," Harry stated again, "If he see's you, the first thing he's going to do is kill you. He won't kill me straight away, he would want to taunt me about my death first," Harry explained,

"But Harry…" Remus started again,

"Remus just go," Harry demanded again, his temper beginning to get the better of him, "There's going to be enough death today for me to deal with without having yours on my conscious as well."

Remus didn't look happy, far from, but he respected Harry's decision and knew that Harry was capable of protecting himself. "Be careful Harry," he advised. Harry just nodded and stepped out of the elevator, hearing the door slam shut behind him, Harry kept walking without looking back.

Harry walked in silence for about five minutes, past the brain room and the room which held the veil. Harry didn't know where he was going, but his scar did. Unlike last time Voldemort used the connection between him and Harry, Harry knew he wasn't being ticked. Voldemort knew that this was going to end tonight, and he would want to do it, one on one. Harry stopped in front of a door and pushed it open. The room was large and spacious, but empty. In the far end of the room, was a dark pulsating ball of magic, which seemed to be getting bigger every second. The entire thing just screamed of evil and darkness and was something Harry wanted to stay away from. Ironically, in front of it stood the Dark Lord Voldemort.

"I thought you weren't going to show up Harry," Voldemort hissed, "But then again, you wouldn't leave you're friends to die now, would you?" his red snake like eyes focuses on Harry.

"What's that?" Harry asked, ignoring Voldemort's greeting and attempts to wind him up.

"Never mind about that Harry," Voldemort sneered, "You won't be alive long enough to see it in action,"

"Why? Are you going to kill me?" Harry questioned with a smirk, "Because we both know you're track record with trying to do that."

Voldemort's eyes flashed in anger and before Harry could react, he raised his wand and hissed, "Crucio." The red light hit Harry in his chest and Harry crumpled onto the floor in pain as he felt like a thousand hot knives pierced his skin at once. Harry was stubborn though, and didn't make a noise; instead he drew blood from his own lip as he bit down on it too hard. Voldemort lifted the spell and laughed at him.

Harry sat up and spat the blood out of his mouth. "Do you see now Harry, that you're destiny, the prophecy, was drawing you here, to die, here, by my hand? Do you see now Harry? You never had a chance of beating me, you will never, be powerful enough to defeat me. You are weak Potter…" To Voldemort's surprise, Harry began to laugh. "You find something funny, Potter?"

"Yes actually, I do," Harry grinned as he coughed and stood up. He picked up the metallic device that had fallen to the ground and waved it in front of his face. "You see this; this is going to be the downfall of the greatest dark lord in a centaury."

Voldemort sneered, "Is that really how you hope to defeat me Potter. A simple muggle device?"

Harry continued to grin. "Let's see what happens." He pressed the button. Both Voldemort and Harry paused and waited for something to happen, nothing did.

Voldemort laughed darkly, "Is that it Potter?"

"Let's find out shall we," Harry announced as he dropped the device on the floor, "I have no wand in my hand, I can't protect myself, why don't you kill me?"

Voldemort hesitated, before deciding that if Harry wanted death, who was he not to give it to him? He raised his wand with a triumphant look in his eye; he had been waiting seventeen years to do this. "Avada Kerdava." Voldemort waited for the sickly green light of death to come soaring out his wand, but it never did. "Avada Kerdava." Voldemort repeated, but again, no curse came. "Avada Kerdava. _Avada Kerdava_. _AVADA KERDAVA_!" Voldemort looked up and glared at Harry, who was just grinning smugly at the most powerful dark lord of all time. "What did you do Potter?"

Harry's grin suddenly disappeared and he narrowed his eyes. "I made you weak." Voldemort's eyes widened as Harry disappeared from where he was standing and appeared right in front of Voldemort. Before the Dark Lord could do anything to stop him, Harry pulled back his arm and punched Voldemort in his jaw. The punch was strong, stronger than it should it be and sent the Dark Lord flying into the wall. "You don't know how long I've been waiting to do that."

Voldemort coughed and spat blood from his mouth. Harry smile grew even wider when he saw how pathetic the Dark Lord was. "If you're wondering how I managed to move so fast and hit you so hard, let me remind you of a famous line I once heard, _the power the Dark Lord knows not_,"

"Love," Voldemort coughed from the floor, "The old fool said it was love."

"The late, and great I might add, Albus Dumbledore, was wrong," Harry explained, he watched as Voldemort fought his way back to his feet. "You see, the prophecy was misinterpreted, it wasn't power, it was more like _powers_. Sure, love may have been one of them, but you see, during the last two years my magic has changed and evolved. My own magic has, woven, into my body, making me much stronger and faster than a normal wizard. I did always wonder why my reflexes were so quick…"

"_AVADA KERDAVA_! _AVADA KERDAVA_!" Voldemort yelled suddenly, pointing his wand at Harry, once again, no spell came out.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you're rubbish with that curse?" Harry questioned rhetorically.

Voldemort continued to glare at Harry, "What did you do?"

"I used this device, handy little things a couple of muggles created, it blocks all magic from being used in a five mile radius," Harry explained, he smiled at Voldemort's look of horror and hatred, "And right about now, about a hundred muggle SAS officers are going to storm into the ministry and arrest, and if they have too, kill any Death Eater they find. Who ever said muggles were weak and useless."

Voldemort's eyes went red with rage as he pulled a small knife out of his robes and charged at Harry. Magically, Voldemort was a lot better than Harry was, but in hand to hand combat, Voldemort wasn't a match for him. Harry had been training, with several martial arts professors, for the last two years and because of his enhanced strength and speed, he found himself to be quite the expert, because of this, he easily blocked Voldemort's attack before kneeing him in his stomach and pushing him back down to the floor.

"You rely too much on magic Tom," Harry commented while using his foot to roll Voldemort over onto his back, "It's made you over confident and arrogant." Harry put his foot on Voldemort's chest and grinned, wishing he had a camera for that exact moment. Voldemort surprised Harry though by grabbing Harry's foot and twisting it sharply, causing Harry to fall to the ground. Voldemort's eyes immediately locked onto the device Harry had brought with him and began to get to his feet with every intention of trying to destroy the device. Harry was quicker though and grabbed onto Voldemort's ankle and from his hand, he produced a bright hot flame. Voldemort hissed in pain as he quickly put it out but before the Dark Lord could move any more, he found a silver sword pressed against his neck.

"Do you like my sword?" Harry asked as he clutched the golden handle tightly. "It's mine you know, made specially by goblins, I call it the Sword of Potter." He paused slightly, "I know, the name needs work." The device, which had fallen on the floor, began beeping loudly, signalling there was magic in the room. "What the…" Harry looked behind Voldemort to see the big ball of magic had returned, but this time it was larger and more deadly than before. "What is that?" Harry questioned, when Voldemort just smirked, Harry pressed the blade tighter against his neck.

"I always win Potter," Voldemort hissed after a few moments of silence, "The magic in that ball isn't just any type of magic, its blood magic. In another few minutes, it will keep growing in size until it consumes the ministry, then the whole of London, it will not stop growing until it destroys everything in its path, and I'm the only one who can stop it." Voldemort began laughing hysterically, "I always win Potter, I always wi…" Harry plunged the sword into Voldemort's stomach. Voldemort dropped to his knees and knowing how hard it usually is to kill of Voldemort, he lifted the sword up into the air and swung it downwards, slicing Voldemort's head clean off.

"Not this time Tom," Harry whispered, standing over the dead body of the Dark Lord. Harry flicked his wrist and the sword disappeared in thin air. The sword was imbued with Harry's own magic, so he could call on it whenever he needed and make it disappear whenever he wanted. Goblins were geniuses when it came to making weapons.

His eyes turned back to the ball of magic that was growing and growing. Harry guessed the ball was too strong for the muggle device and stopped it from working. Harry approached it, it looked like Voldemort really was going to win, the ball was pulsating and fizzy with energy, it practically screamed evil. Harry reached out, trying to touch it, but instead his hand went straight through the ball. Harry pulled it back out in shock and stepped backwards. To his surprise, the ball decreased in size.

"Blood magic," Harry whispered, Voldemort had said it was blood magic. "He took some of my blood!" he realized with a start, that night almost three years ago when Voldemort was reborn using Harry's blood could prove to be a good thing. The ball had turned smaller when he put his hand in, meaning Harry could stop probably stop it. He pulled out his want and whispered a spell to try and contain the ball. Nothing happened. Harry realized quickly that the device was still working, meaning there was nothing he could do to stop it. The ball grew larger once more at a faster rate, until it covered half the room. There was only one more thing Harry could do.

"Guess what Tom, you don't win." Harry muttered, before he stepped into the ball of magic, in a last ditch attempt to stop it from destroying everything.

Later, Harry would only remember one thing about the experience.

It hurt.

000

**So that's the first chapter over, the second will follow shortly. Let me know what you think guys, reviews mean everything to authors!**


	2. From Above

**Second instalment in one day, aren't you all lucky people? Same as before, read and review and let me know what you think. **

**CHAPTER TWO:** _From Above_

Rupert Giles stood by his window staring out into the moonlight. It was an understatement to say that he wasn't in the best of moods. It had only been a few short months ago when Buffy Summers, the Slayer, was forced into killing her beloved Angel. Torn apart by depression, Buffy fled Sunnydale, and all attempts to find her since had proved to be useless. While Buffy was gone, her closest friends, Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg and her boyfriend, Daniel _Oz_ Osbourne had been trying their best to keep the vampire population in Sunnydale down to a minimum. While it was obvious to anyone that they were doing the best they could, it still wasn't good enough. They needed the power of a Slayer.

He was brought out of his thoughts by a loud rumble in the sky. He glanced up into and saw flashes of lightening streaking across the sky. While it was strange weather for summer, Giles didn't think there was anything supernatural about it and didn't think much about it. It began to rain, heavily; Giles was distracted though and sat back down on his seat. He had been looking up any reports of vampires being killed anywhere in the summer, any sign or clue which could lead him to the whereabouts of Buffy. Again, his thoughts were distracted when there was a loud clap of thunder. This time, Giles did get to his feet and walked over to the window once more.

"That's odd," he muttered, at the sight he saw. The entire sky had turned bright red, glowing with something…unnatural. There was another flash of lightening as it streaked down from the sky and hit the ground. There was something different about that lightening, inside the blue streak was something dark and…humanoid. "What the…"

Giles only stood staring for another second before deciding he had to investigate. Usually, he would ask Buffy to do it for him but as she had gone MIA…He grabbed his car keys and ran to his door, he paused, realizing he forgot something, and ran back into the room and grabbed a large wooden cross and a stake. It was night after all.

He ran to his car and opened the door. A few seconds later, he was driving toward were he saw the lightening bolt land. If he was correct, and he usually was, it landed in a graveyard about five minutes away. He just hoped he got there before anybody or anything else decided to investigate as well. With a quick glance at the sky, Giles saw that it had returned to the clear dark night. That was one positive, he thought, at least nobody else would be appearing from a red sky. He pulled up at the graveyard and with the cross in his hand and a stake tucked away in his trousers. Giles jumped out the car and raced through the graveyard.

Despite not knowing exactly where the lightening had hit, huge dent in the ground told him where it was. He raced toward it; luckily for him he was stopped by no vampires, and approached the huge crater that was now in the middle of the graveyard. Inside, was a teenager, a boy, about seventeen years old. His hair was short and black and looked as if it was styled in a way so it supposed to look messy. Giles jumped down inside the crater and immediately pressed two fingers against the boy's neck. There was a pulse, but it was weak, very weak.

What really worried Giles was the fact that teenager had survived this. Not that he was pretending to understand what was going on because he didn't, but he knew that nothing should be able to survive lightening like that and survive the impact of landing. What it meant was that whatever this was, human or otherwise, was powerful, very powerful.

000

"Here we are, Sunnydale's resident vampire slaying team," Xander Harris said as he walked into Giles' apartment. He was followed by Willow Rosenberg and her boyfriend, Daniel Osbourne. "Not that we've killed any yet…but were working at it."

They walked into the lounge to see Giles sitting on his chair with a book out in front of him. That wasn't what caught their attention when they walked in, no, what did was the young man on a make shift bed with chains on his arms and legs chained to the wall. "Err…loving the décor Giles," Xander commented,

"Who is this?" Willow asked in a straightforward manner.

"That," Giles said, closing the book and standing up, "Is a very good question."

"You know what else is a good question," Xander replied, "Why is he chained up against the wall? Is this what you do when you get bored?"

Giles chose to ignore Xander and answer Willow's question, "I don't know who he is. But did any of you notice anything strange about the sky last night?"

"Yeah," Willow answered, "It turned red for a couple of seconds, then it went back to normal. I assumed you were doing a spell or something, but I could have been wrong…"

"When it turned red, this young man came from it." Giles stated.

Xander snorted, "You're kidding, like anyone could actually come from the sky."

"I'm not kidding at all." Giles said grimly.

"Oh…well…then…shouldn't we…you know…stake him?" Xander questioned.

"He's not a vampire, idiot," Oz said, "He's lying in the sunlight."

Xander turned to see that rays from the sun were hitting the boy head on. "Oh…right…"

"Is this why you called us?" Willow asked,

Giles nodded and handed the book he had been reading to Willow, "I need you're help with research. I need to know exactly where he came from and if needs be, how to send him back." Giles went to his book shelf and pulled off too more books, the first of which he handed to Oz who accepted it without complaint, however, when he handed the book to Xander, he looked down at it and groaned.

"This book is about as thick as my head," Xander complained, "Have you never heard of the term, _summer holidays_?" Giles just gave him a stern look, and eventually, Xander relented and took the book and walked toward a table.

000

Hours later, the sun had gone down. The young man they had been researching on all day hadn't moved an inch, none of them were sure whether this was a good thing or not. Unfortunately for them, they had found nothing on the sky opening up and turning red and if possible, even less on people falling out of the sky. They all just agreed they would have to wake up to assess whether he would be a threat or not.

Agreeing that further research would just be useless, they decided that it was time to try and take over some of Buffy's slaying duties while she was away. As soon as they left the house, the man who they had been watching opened his eyes.

000

Harry Potter had been through a lot in his life, but even he had to admit, waking up chained to a bed in an unfamiliar room was first, even for him. He wanted to stretch first for all, but realized he couldn't as he was chained up in a star position.

"Okay, either I've been captured by Death Eaters, or…" Harry muttered, "I was stunned from behind and locked up by a bunch fan girls with a rather large…dominatrix…fetish…"

After realizing that no one was around, Harry used all his magically enhanced strength to try and break the chains. Apparently, the chains were stronger than Harry originally gave them credit for as they proved to be a lot more difficult to break than he had originally thought they would be, of course, after a few more tries, he did break them. Harry sat up, now that his arms were free, he would just have to worry about freeing his legs. He looked down and realised he was still in the clothes he was wearing from his battle with Voldemort. Fishing around in his pocket, he grinned when he felt his wand in the same place he left it. Pulling it out, Harry muttered a quick unlocking charm and felt the chains around his ankle loosen. Despite the success of the spell, Harry was frowning, that spell took a lot more power out of him than it should have. It was only a first year spell, Harry could usually do those in his sleep, but this time, the spell had left him winded and feeling magically weak.

Harry jumped out of the bed and held his wand out in front of him. He was in the lounge, apparently, as the front door was right in front of were the bed was. There books in a large bookshelf along the wall and Harry approached them. It was too dark to read, and not wanting to turn on the light and alert people to his presence, instead he muttered, "_Lumos_." The small light appeared on the tip of his wand, however, the use of such as small spell had Harry feeling once again weak.

"What's happening to me?" he questioned silently, before shaking his head and putting it to the back of his mind, deciding to think about it later. He read some of the titles of the books on the bookshelf and saw they were books filled with magic and rituals. Not really surprising, considering these people kidnapped him, but then again, why didn't they take his wand?

Again putting these thoughts to the back of his mind, Harry quickly searched the rest of the place, finding nobody, but he knew whoever was here had been here recently. Questions continued to eat away at him, the first of which, where the hell was he? The last thing he remembered was defeating Voldemort, slicing his head off the rest of his body and then walking into that ball of magic. He couldn't remember anything other than that, but he knew whoever lived here had some answers for him. Fortunately for him, there was a map on the counter with a circled graveyard on it.

"Who the hell wants to visit a graveyard?" he questioned before shrugging, "Oh well, guess I'm just going to have to find out."

000

The patrol was not going very well. It didn't take long for Xander, Giles, Willow and Oz to find a Vampire, but as Xander had mentioned earlier, finding one wasn't the problem, slaying it was. The vampire knocked Xander and Oz off their feet and too the ground. Giles had immediately charged forward and shoved a cross in the vampires face, making it back away.

"XANDER! THE STAKE!" Giles yelled, unfortunately for him, Xander had dropped the wooden stake when he fell to the floor and had to scramble around to find it. "NOW!"

"I'm looking for it!" Xander snapped back. Giles took his attention off the vampire for a split second to glare at Xander, this proved to be a mistake though as the vampire knocked the cross out of his hand. Giles snapped his head back around toward the vampire but was only met with a strong punch, sending him flying back and making him hit his head on a tombstone. The vampire turned and began stalking toward Willow, who was in the corner trying to stay out of the way. Before the vampire could get to Willow though, Oz came out of nowhere and jumped onto the vampire's back. The vampire only struggled for a second before throwing Oz of his back and down onto the floor. After being satisfied that OZ was out cold on the ground, the vampire once again turned his attention toward Willow. Fortunately for her, Xander had finally found the stake and charged forward, looking to stab the vampire in his heart.

The vampire saw him coming though and grabbed Xander's arm and flipped him over, making him land on the floor hard. The vampire then twisted Xander's arm painfully, causing him to drop the stake. The vampire picked up the stake and instead began to try and stab Xander with it. Xander fought back as much as he could but the vampire was physically stronger than him and slowly the stake inched closer and closer to his unprotected chest. The vampire grinned triumphantly as the stake lay only inches away from Xander, until a ball of flame hit the vampire in his back. There vampire turned and glared at whoever dared to attack him from behind while Xander just used the chance to crawl away. He regrouped with Giles, Oz and Willow who were standing together, staring at the stranger who attacked the vampire. Xander got back to his feet when he saw the vampire standing with his back to them, staring at the boy who attacked him. It was the same boy who they had left locked up in Giles' house.

"You?" Xander said, a little louder than he had meant to.

The boy's eyes just shifted toward the group for a split second and his eyes narrowed, "Because you recognize me I'm assuming you were the people that chained me up."

000

Using the map, it wasn't very hard for Harry to find the graveyard in question, but it was a whole other issue about whether or not he should go into it or not. Harry would be the first to admit that he was not a hundred percent right now. The injury on his shoulder was still bothering him, plus the fact that he could barely use first year spells without finding himself utterly exhausting was not giving him the confidence to think he could defend himself adequately. He just shrugged it off, Harry knew that he was not like Voldemort and he didn't completely rely on his magic to defend himself. With that thought in mind, he entered the graveyard.

It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. There were four people, all on the floor, cowering from a tall figure. The figure standing up was standing other a young man with a wooden object in his hand, obviously trying to stab him with it. One thing Hermione was right about, he did have a _"hero complex"_ and while not knowing exactly what was going on, he knew wasn't going to let someone die without some sort of explanation first. With that thought in mind, he produced a small ball of flame in his right hand, nothing that was going to cause anyone any real damage, just sting them a little, he was happy to note that he didn't feel a strain using his power, just his magic. He wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not yet. Without wasting anymore time, he threw the ball of fire into the figure stumbled forward before turning around and glaring at Harry.

Harry almost took an instinctive step back when the figure turned around. It had a humanoid shape and was about the same height as he was; it took another second to realize that it was a vampire, but not a vampire that Harry had any seen. If he had to describe it, he would so his face had been twisted into a demonic structure and with his sharp teeth and yellow eyes, Harry could assume that it wasn't going to be the winner of any beauty pageants anytime soon.

"You?" one of the guys that the vampire shad been attacking stated. Harry's eyes flickered toward them and noticed that they had all regrouped and was either staring at him or the vampire on fear.

Harry narrowed his eyes and he looked at the group of observers, "Because you recognise me I'm assuming you're the people who chained me up." Harry saw some of there eyes widen but he didn't have a chance to comment on it as the vampire charged at Harry.

Harry didn't draw for his wand like he usually would. If he couldn't even perform weak first year spells without feeling weak afterwards, there was no way he would be able to take out a vampire, instead he decided h would have to handle this using his hands and his power. To Harry's surprise, the vampire leapt forward and swung his fist at Harry's head. That's what Harry wasn't expecting, he had never known a vampire to try and punch someone before, usually they would just jump on you and try and bite you. Harry as fast though and was able to duck the punch but the vampire surprised him again with a well aimed kick in his mid section. Harry had never known a vampire to have any sort of prowess in martial arts before; this one must have been an enigma. Luckily for Harry, he was also trained in many forms of martial arts and quickly dodged a kick and a second punch before jumping backwards.

Thinking that if this vampire seriously wanted to fight him in hand to hand combat, Harry decided that he should show him exactly who he was messing with. He leaned backwards again and fell into a handstand position before planting his feet back onto the ground, he then bent his knees and jumped into the air and used his magically enhanced speed and strength to perform a back flip and land with his feet on the ground.

He caught the impressed looks on the faces of the people who had chained him up and the slight look of fear in the vampire's eyes and dropped back into a fighting stance. The vampire didn't charge forward and attack again; instead he remained where he was, about five feet from Harry, and glared at him. "Who are you?" he questioned, his yellow eyes boring into him, waiting for an answer.

Harry grinned, "Someone you don't want to fight,"

The vampire's eyes flashed dangerously with anger, "You think you can beat me, mortal?"

"Please," Harry said while rolling his eyes, "I've defeated worse things than you on a good day." Vampire growled and this time, did charge at Harry. Now, Harry was ready for the Vampire's strange style of fighting and easily parried away a punch and blocked a low kick by lifting his shin. Harry leaned forward and thrust his fist forward, hitting the vampire hard in his stomach, causing him to stumble back. Harry jumped forward and leaped into the air before connecting with a kick to the vampire's chin. Before the vampire could recover, Harry continued his attack flawlessly and hit the vampire with two strong right hands before connecting with a strong roundhouse kick, knocking the vampire to the ground. The vampire didn't seem to want to accept defeat and jumped back up to his feet and made to attack Harry, but stopped when he realised Harry's palm was on his stomach.

"Bye bye," Harry said mockingly before releasing a burst of flame from his hand, it spread around his body quickly and reduced the vampire to nothing more than a pile of ash. Harry brushed his off his hands quickly and shook his head at the pile of ashes that had been his foe. Finally, he looked up to see the group's awed faces. He turned toward them and folded his arms across his chest.

"Right," he said loudly, "Which one of you bastards chained me up?"

000

**So did I do well, did I do badly, you know how you can tell me? By pressing the button on the bottom of the page which says "review". **


	3. Chosen Ones

**A/N Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, they inspired me to get this chapter finished a lot earlier than I thought it would. Keep them coming please. **

**CHAPTER THREE:** _The Chosen Ones._

Silence met Harry's question. None of the four that was standing against the wall wanted to answer as they were still staring at Harry with a mixture of awe and disbelief. The tension was thick as Harry waited patiently for an answer, he was only half aware of how threatening he looked with his arms folded across his body, glaring at the four standing. Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair, a trait he had picked up from his father. Realizing that he wasn't going to get an answer, Harry began to walk forward and toward the group. Seeing this, two of the men who were standing there lifted up the wooden sticks they were holding, ready to defend themselves. Normally, Harry would assure them that he was not going to hurt them, but then again, he had a stressful last twenty four hours and he wasn't in the mood to mess about anymore. First of all he had to fight for his life against Death Eaters in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic, then he was able to trick and kill Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries, then he had to walk into a big fizzing red ball of magic to save the world before waking up to find himself chained up against a wall. Then he realized his magic wasn't working properly before being attacked by a vampire only minutes later. It was safe to say that he wasn't in the best of moods right now.

Harry kept on walking, not caring that once he got close enough that those men were likely to try and knock his head off with the wooden sticks they were carrying. The graveyard they were in was silent meaning Harry's footsteps were echoing around the night. Harry didn't care though; all he cared about right now was finding out who these people were and then going home. He knew he would sleep a good forty eight hours after the day he's had. He finally got close enough to the group so he could attack them, or they could attack him if they so pleased.

To the group's surprise, Harry didn't attack; instead, he leaned causally against a headstone nearby and surveyed the group. At the head was a man whose golden days were obviously behind him. He wore glasses, not unlike the one's Harry used to wear, only now he had a spell performed on his eyes to correct his sight, glasses were an unnecessary hazard in a battle. The man behind him looked closer to his age. He held a stick, just like the first man had, although he could see a small quiver in his hand and a small glint in his eye, this young man was scared, scared of him. Behind those two was a young redhead, looking at Harry with distrust. Harry thought she was quite attractive, but had to wonder what she was doing in a graveyard in the middle of the night. The last of which was another young man, but he stood in such a position that he was ready to jump in front of her to protect her if he had to.

"So…" Harry said casually, as he leaned against the headstone. He twirled his right arm around as the wound on his shoulder had made his arm slightly sore. "I'm waiting for an answer."

It was the younger man with the wooden stick that answered first, "Um, we didn't chain you up…no…it wasn't us."

Harry just rolled his eyes, he really wasn't in the mood for this, "Then how did you recognise me?"

"Er…well…you see…we just…" the man stammered slightly, "We just…thought you was somebody else?" he half asked half stated.

Harry chose to ignore the stammering and pathetic lying. It was only then while sitting on the headstone when he realized he had no idea where he was. "Where are we?"

The question seemed to surprise the group, but the older man, the one who seemed to be in charge answered first. "Ridgeway cemetery." The man said slowly, Harry just waved his hand to signal that the description needed to be broader, "Sunnydale," the man said after giving Harry a strange look.

"You know, California, America…" The young man said, "Earth?" The other members in the group just glared at him, each of them giving him looks telling him to _shut_ _the hell up_.

To their surprise, Harry just chuckled, "You're funny," he commented, the young man looked proud of himself and opened his mouth to cut him off but Harry spoke first, "But I've had a very bad day and I just want to go home, answer my question, and I can do that." Harry's voice turned deadly serious and his eyes narrowed once again, "Why did you chain me up?"

Before anyone could answer, Harry noticed a glint of sliver in the night, spinning through the air at a fast pace. A second later, Harry saw it was a knife as it went soaring past all four people and lodged itself into the tombstone Harry was leaning on, about five inches away from Harry' head. Harry turned to glance at the knife that had almost pierced his skull and with one sharp movement, pulled it out of the tombstone. Twirling the knife in his hand, Harry turned to see who had thrown it as did the rest of the group. In the distance, Harry could see a girl walking up. She was walking fast, and glaring at Harry for some strange reason. As she got closer, Harry could tell a few more details, she was blonde, and well, she was gorgeous. Harry remained casual but inside he began to tense up, anyone who could aim a knife that well from the far was defiantly dangerous.

"Buffy?" the redheaded girl whispered disbelief evident in her voice.

The blonde girl, apparently named Buffy, turned and gave the redheaded girl a small smile, "Hey Wills," she said but kept all her attention on Harry.

"You're back." The younger man stated, his mouth was gaping as if he still couldn't believe that the girl was standing there, "Where have you been?"

"I think that question is best saved until later, don't you think?" Buffy answered, she did manage did give him a small smile, only taking her eyes of Harry for a second. For the most part, Harry just remained leaning on the tombstone with the knife twirling in his hand, just watching the girl's every move. The girl, Buffy, turned her head slightly and saw the older man standing there, watching her with disbelief and a small smile on his face, she gave him a small smile, "Hey Giles,"

The man, Giles, cleared his throat and did his best to remove the expression from his face and wipe away the smile. "Buffy." He nodded, in a voice Harry thought was supposed to be professional; although there was no doubt that he was happy to see her.

"Good to see you again Oz," Buffy nodded toward him,

OZ gave her a small wave in return, "Hey Buffy."

As she approached, Harry couldn't help but think she looked completely out of place here. She looked like she was from a rich family on Hollywood and that she shouldn't be walking around in creepy graveyards in some town he had never heard of. She looked young and innocent, but he knew that this was probably untrue; anyone who could throw a knife that well should be approached with caution. One word and for all he knew, she could try and kill him. Unfortunately for her, people had been trying to kill Harry since he was a baby and he no longer showed fear in front of potential enemies, instead he mocked them as much as possible to get them angry and hopefully make mistakes.

Finally, Buffy stopped walking and stood directly in front of Harry. Harry got the feeling he was supposed to be intimated, but Harry Potter wasn't intimated easily. "And who are you?" she asked eventually, after spending a couple of moments eyeing him with distrust.

Harry grinned, "I'm a guy who has a couple of questions to ask," he responded, the girl seemed to tense at Harry's evasiveness, but Harry continued anyway, "I would ask you to answer but I think it's best you let the adults do the talking." He finished with his signature grin, a grin he knew for a fact that he had inherited from his father. It seemed to work and Buffy narrowed her eyes, apparently not finding any humour in Harry's comment.

Instead of replying to him, Buffy turned around and looked at the guy Harry remembered to be called Giles. "Can I stake him?"

Harry raised an eyebrow at her bluntness, but did not show any outward change in his demeanour. "Oh…um…he's not a vampire," Giles told her.

Buffy turned back and faced Harry and shrugged, "You'd be surprised at how many different things that would kill."

"Why so violent?" Harry commented, "You wouldn't want to say something that might get you hurt now, would you?"

Buffy raised an eyebrow, "You really think you could take me?"

"Don't think it would be that difficult," Harry shrugged. He could see that the group, her friends, were watching the scenario unfold with interest, it was as if they were waiting to jump in and help out Buffy if they had too. Even if his comments didn't show it, Harry was vary wary around this girl, there was something _different_ about her, and he wasn't eager to fight someone he didn't know anything about.

"Tell me you're name," Buffy stated as she dropped back into a fighting stance, "I don't like to beat up strangers,"

"Do me a favour and step aside," Harry countered, despite Buffy taking a fighting stance, Harry still didn't make a move, he was sure she wasn't going to attack. She was just trying to frighten him, "Wouldn't want to get you're hair all dirty now, would we?"

"Do _me_ a favour and make words _not_ come out of you're mouth," Buffy retorted before turning back to her friends, apparently satisfied that Harry wasn't going to attack her. Despite the situation he found himself in, Harry couldn't help but smile. He liked this girl, Buffy. The art of a good taunt was lost on some people in this Harry modern age. "Who is he?" she asked Giles.

Giles shrugged, "We don't know," he answered truthfully,

"Yeah he just showed up and used fire to waste away a vamp," the young man added, "How did you do that by the way?"

Before Harry could even answer, Buffy spoke up and answered it. "Demon." She said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

For the first time in the conversation, Harry was well and truly lost and his face showed it. "De-what?!" In his short seventeen year life, Harry had faced almost all the dark creatures the magical world had. From Dementors to Werewolves, from sixteen foot Basilisk's to fire breathing dragons, from Death Eater wannabe's to the Dark Lord himself, and never once had he even heard of a demon, let alone be accused of being one. Once again Harry began to wonder where he was and what had happened to him. He had never seen a vampire like the one he had fought before and he had come face to face with quite a few of them. Not to mention the fact that he was in London when he was fighting Voldemort, and now he found himself in some small town near Sunnydale. He didn't know what had happened, but what he did know was that he needed to get back to Hogwarts and soon.

Apparently, the look on his face and his question had thrown the others. So much so that even Buffy looked at him like he was crazy. "You know, demon…nonhuman, lack of a soul, generically evil, ringing any bells?"

Harry shook his head, he was too tired for all this, all he wanted now was his bed. "I'm not a demon," he assured, even though he still wasn't one hundred percent sure what they were, "I'm just Harry."

Buffy's face scrunched up in confusion, "What's a Harry?"

"Um, Buffy?" the younger man spoke up, "I think that's his name."

"Oh," Buffy muttered, looking slightly embarrassed, "I knew that…"

"Um…Buffy...right?" Harry questioned, while staring at something beyond her.

Buffy ignored him and was instead questioning Giles, "So, where did you find him?"

"He…well…he fell out of the sky," Giles muttered, Harry heard this, but was a little distracted by the worrying sight he was seeing.

"Um…guys…" Harry said again, trying to get some attention, again he was ignored.

"He fell out of the sky?!" Buffy repeated with her mouth wide open, "Is that even possible?"

"Hey! Blondie!" Harry yelled out as a last ditch attempt to get her attention. It worked though and Buffy turned back round to face Harry with a glare and a murderous look in her eye.

"Blondie?" she repeated slowly. "No one ever calls me _Blondie_," she stated,

Harry shrugged, "Well I wouldn't have to be calling you Blondie if you had been paying attention," He replied, before Buffy could get a word out, Harry spoke again, "Where you expecting company?" Buffy's face showed her confusion until Harry nodded into the distance. She, along with the rest of the group turned to see what Harry had been staring at. There, in the distance were eight more vampires, each of them watching the group with narrowed eyes as they approached cautiously.

"Oh crap…" the young man muttered as he stared at the vampire's who continued to get closer and closer.

"Uh huh," the redheaded girl agreed, "Double crap,"

Buffy turned around to face the vampires and the group seemed to rally behind her. Apparently, Harry had down enough to appease them and for them not to think that he was a threat. He wasn't sure how he had done that, all he had done was avoid all of their questions and try his best to annoy the blonde girl, Buffy. There was still the question about he ended up being chained to a wall, but he was beginning to understand. If he had in fact fallen from the sky and these people saw him and were also fighting vampires, they were probably right to consider him a threat and try and keep him contained, thinking about it, Harry would probably have done the same thing. Besides, if they truly meant him any harm, they would have tried to kill him by now. It was for this reason why Harry finally pushed of the tombstone and jumped into the middle of the group and stood in front of Buffy. Plus, he felt a little guilty. He assumed that the vampires were after him since he reduced the last one to ash only a second ago.

"Why don't you let me handle this?" he said slowly,

"Why?" Buffy questioned, her hands went to her hips in what she probably considered to be a threatening manner, "You don't think I can?"

Harry couldn't resisted taking the chance to annoy her further and blew air from his pursed lips, "Well…" he trailed off,

Buffy just glared at him while sticking her hand out behind her, "Xander." She ordered. The young man, who Harry now knew to be called Xander, obediently handed her the short wooden stick he had been carrying. The vampires were now dangerously close to the group, close enough to attack. Buffy just grabbed the wooden stick, smirked at Harry, before pulling back and throwing it. It went soaring past Harry's head and he turned to see it land in the chest of the nearest vampire. Harry caught one look of shock from the vampire before he exploded in a cloud of dust.

"Whoa…" Harry muttered, slightly impressed, ignoring the impending danger of the vampires, Harry asked Buffy a question that had been on his mind since she threw the knife. "Who are you?"

Buffy stood up a little taller and took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say was of great importance. "I'm the Slayer."

"What...you're the sailor?" Harry questioned with a confused look on his face, "Um…shouldn't you be on a boat somewhere?"

"The Slayer," Buffy repeated in mock slowness, at Harry's still confused expression, she added, "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Harry just shook his head, "Sorry, I don't know any sailors." Buffy glared at him and opened her mouth, probably to say something less than polite to him, but Harry cut her off and spoke first. "Anyway, it's my turn now." Harry turned to face the vampires who now were a lot closer than Harry remembered them were being. He brought his hand together and summoned a fireball. He could hear the others gasp in surprise at the feat but Harry just grinned and continued. He kept on feeding little amounts of heat and power to it, if he used it to much, it would overwhelm him and the consequences would be…less than ideal. With one quick movement, he pushed the fireball out and it hit the nearest vampire. It spread around it and the vampire screamed in pain before it was reduced to ashes.

"How…how did you do that?" Buffy asked,

Harry noticed that Buffy's stance changed slightly and once again she now looked ready to fight Harry at a moments notice. Harry just grinned at her, "Magic."

They seemed to accept the answer, confirming Harry's suspicions that they knew about the existence of magic, but still looked slightly suspicious of him. The remaining six vampires stood in front of them, waiting for either Harry or Buffy to attack.

"Wanna take three each?" Buffy compromised.

"Sure," Harry nodded, "Just try and keep up." Buffy scowled at him but didn't have much time to retort as at that very moment, two of the vampires leapt forward and attacked Harry and Buffy. Simultaneously, both Harry and Buffy raised there feet to kick the vampires in their stomachs, sending them stumbling backwards. Just like that, the battle was on. Harry found himself having to dodge, duck, block and parry punches and kicks. While Harry was quite good with one on one training, he never usually found himself in situations were he had to use his hand to hand combat, therefore he had never found himself in a three on one situation before, and the fact that he could barely use any magic right now didn't leave in the best of states. Harry was a survivor though and used his quick thinking to get himself out of dangerous situations. Dodging a punch from one of the vamps, he leaned on the tombstone and hoisted himself into the air before kicking it sharply in the stomach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a vampire take a swing at him from behind, Harry fell to the ground, letting the vampires punch connect with one of the other vamps. Harry rolled onto his stomach and grabbed the vampire ankle, releasing a short, controlled burst of flames, just enough to reduced it to dust.

Finally having the chance to take a breather, Harry turned just in time to see Buffy drive the wooden stick, which Harry assumed was a stake, through the heart of one of the vampires she was fighting. What she didn't see was one of the vampires grabbing her from behind, leaning in as if it was about to bite her. Reacting quickly, Harry called for his sword and smiled when he felt the familiar weight of it in his hands. Jumping over another tombstone, Harry drove the sword right through the heart of the vampire that was attacking Buffy, crumbling it to dust.

"You can thank me later," Harry grinned, twirling his sword in his hand. Buffy scowled at him, obviously not used to playing the damsel in distress, but instead of saying anything, she suddenly grabbed Harry and pushed him out of the way, just in time to stake another vampire who was about to attack Harry from behind.

Buffy grinned mockingly at him and twirled her stake in her hands, "_You_ can thank _me_ later,"

The fight wasn't over as there were two vampires left, and both of them chose that moment to attack. One attacked Buffy and the other focused on Harry. He immediately had to raise his sword to block a punch from the vamp and slashed downward, trying to catch it unawares. The vampire saw it coming though and jumped backwards before thrusting its hand forwards and knocking the sword out of Harry's hand. Before Harry could react, the vampire smashed his fist into Harry's head, causing him to fall back. Harry was beginning to get worried; he was feeling a lot weaker than he was when he started this fight. He had been in too many fights in the last twenty four hours and his body needed a chance to recover, he knew he had to defeat this vampire quickly or he wouldn't make it out of this fight alive. The vampire jumped up on top of Harry and tried to bite him, but Harry used all his strength and managed to keep its teeth from his neck. After a few seconds of struggling, Harry leaned forward and head butted the vampire, causing it to fall backwards. Harry scrambled back up to his feet and not having any other choice, he pulled his wand out of his pocket and pointed it at the vampire.

_Lumos Maximus!_

A huge ray of sunlight erupted from Harry's wand and Harry poured the remaining amount of his magical power into it, the ray was close to the vampire and it had no where to go. It tried to cover his face but the sunlight was too bright and burnt him on the spot. Luckily, the sunlight distracted the vampire Buffy was fighting for a crucial few seconds and it was enough time for her to stake and kill the remaining vampire. Harry sighed in relief when the vampires were dead and quickly cast a summoning charm to retrieve his sword. Once the handle reached his hand, he quickly made it disappear out of sight so he could summon it again whenever he found himself needing it.

There was something wrong though, he felt weak, sick. His eye sight blurred and sounds became muffled around him. Harry was worried; he didn't know whether this was just an extreme case of magical exhaustion or something else entirely. It had taken way too much out of him to produce the sunlight and for a simple summoning charm. This was his last thought as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he blacked out.

***

Giles watched from a distance as Buffy and the newcomer who had called himself Harry, fought against the onslaught of vampires. Knowing that Buffy could handle herself, Giles was drawn to watching the newcomer fight. Giles saw that he was moving slower than he had been before; it was as if he was tired, and that wasn't surprising. Considering that it was only earlier on that day he had quite literally fallen out of the sky and even then, he looked like he had been through a hell of a battle. Since then he found himself fighting of Vampires and to be fair to him, he was doing quite a good job, Giles was even pleasantly surprised when he had helped out Buffy and stabbed a vampire through the heart. What did bother him though was where the sword came from, it wasn't there before. He wasn't sure if he should have been surprised or not as Harry had produced fire from nothing before. He guesses it was some form of magic, but magic like that should have left Harry weak and tired, Giles resolved he would ask him once the fight was over. Giles watched as Harry was in trouble, one of the last two vampires was on top of him, attempting to bite him, but at the last possible moment Harry was able to push it off. Giles watched, amazed, as the young man pulled out a stick and waved it around. A second later, a ray of sunlight appeared from nowhere and turned the remaining vamp to dust.

Giles was in shock at this, he had never seen such a feat of magic before. He knew such spells to create sunlight was possible, but he knew it was useless in a battle against vampires as it usually took a while to prepare and took up a lot of energy to perform, and yet, Harry had performed it quickly and almost effortlessly. Well, he was wrong about the whole effortlessly part as second later; it looked as if Harry blacked out and dropped to the ground.

"That was fun," Buffy commented as she made her way back over to the group. Apparently Giles was the only one who noticed that Harry was unconscious. Willow broke away from the group and wrapped Buffy up in a hug. Xander soon followed and joined the hug.

"Where have you been Buff?" Willow asked, her voice was mumbled though as she was still hugging Buffy, "We were so worried."

"I know Will, I'm sorry." Buffy said as she eventually broke away from the hug, "But I'm back now."

"But where were you?" Xander pressed,

Giles stepped in suddenly, "I really don't think now's the time for these questions, I think we have something else to deal with." Without waiting for an answer, Giles walked past Buffy, Willow and Xander and toward where Harry was lying. The rest of the group followed him silently. Once they made it to Harry, he pressed two fingers against his neck and checked for a pulse. Thankfully there was one there.

"What happened?" Buffy asked, she hadn't been watching Harry fight as she was too busy with her own vampire, "Did the Vamp get him?"

"No he blasted him with sunlight," Oz answered from behind the rest of the group, "How did he do that by the way?"

Everyone just shrugged, not having an answer for him. "We should get him to a hospital." Giles said after a few seconds.

"But what if he tries to kill us," Willow argued, "You know, when he wakes up."

Giles shook his head, "He hasn't given us any reason not to trust him."

"He also hasn't given us a reason to trust him." Buffy added.

Xander shook his head, "He did save my life…you know…with the first vampire."

Giles sighed and took of his glasses and cleaned them in his jumper, "Were going to take him to the hospital and when he wakes up, we can ask him a few questions to see whether we can trust him or not."

"And if we can't?" Oz asked,

It was Buffy who answered, "If we can't, then we take him out."

***

**A/N Please review everyone. Anyone on this site who is also an author knows how much reviews can mean to people so please let me now how I did. Also, can you let me know what pairings you want to see. I know what pairings I want to write but I also want the opinions of my reader, just remember that the story is set at the start of Season three. Until next time! **


	4. White Rooms and Black Books

**Thanks to the fantastic response from my last few chapters, they really are inspiring me to write faster. At the moment, it seems like most people want this to end up being a Harry/Buffy story, let me know if this is the pairing you want or not. **

**CHAPTER FOUR:** _White Rooms and Black Books_

When Harry opened his eyes, he was confronted with four white walls. Part of him breathed a sigh of relief as he assumed he was back in the hospital wing. Back at Hogwarts, back home. He laid there with a satisfied grin on his face, waiting for Madam Promfrey to come in and scold him for getting himself hurt again before pouring a vile tasting potion down his throat. He waited for Ron and Ginny to walk in, Ron to congratulate him on defeating Voldemort and for Ginny to hit him for almost getting killed. He waited for Mrs Weasley to walk in and crush him in a tight hug, for Remus to come in and tell him that his parents would be so proud of him. He lay there and waited…and waited. It was then he heard the beeping.

He turned his head and saw a machine with a screen in it. Inside the screen there was a line which went up and down every few seconds. Harry recognised it as a heart monitor. He sighed, it was a muggle machine and no wizard would be caught dead using it. He brought his hands up and rubbed his eyes. His mind was a mess. He remembered cornering Voldemort, defeating him, and everything past that was a bit of a blur. One thing he did know was that he had to get out of here. White walls and hospital rooms were one thing that would always drive Harry crazy.

As Harry attempted to sit up, the door opened and a middle aged, bald man with a clipboard in his hand entered the room. He was wearing a white coat, leading him to believe he was a doctor. "Good to see you finally awake," the doctor commented as he saw Harry sit up, "You had us worried for a while."

"How…" Harry had to cough a little and rub his throat; his throat was hoarse and dry. Wordlessly, the doctor handed him a cup of water that had been on the table beside him, Harry accepted it and took a long sip, "Thanks," Harry muttered, his throat feeling a lot better than it had a few seconds ago, "How long have I been out for?"

"A little over three days," The doctor answered. Harry's eyes widened slightly, he had been unconscious for three days. Sure, the fight with the Death Eaters had been brutal, but he had been through worse and woken up in a quicker amount of time. There had to be something else, the fight with Voldemort had been quick, Voldemort never even got the chance to attack him. So why was he unconscious for three whole days? It didn't make sense.

Then he remembered.

He remembered the big ball of red magic, powerful enough to overpower the device. He remembered waking up chained against a wall and finding out that his magic wasn't working as well as it should. He remembered going in search of who chained him up and remembered finding himself in a fight for his life against a bunch of vampires.

Harry shook his head, he remembered now, all too clearly, "So…can I go?" he asked the Doctor, as he said before; white walls tend to make him crazy.

The Doctor shook his head, "We couldn't figure out what made you unconscious for so long." _Of course you couldn't,_ Harry thought; _especially considering the reason was probably magical. _"We want to run an MRI scan and a couple of x rays to see if we can find any internal damage. Plus, I really don't like the look of that shoulder." Harry glanced at his shoulder to see that his shoddy bandage had been replaced by a clean white one.

"Whatever," Harry sighed, "Do whatever you need to do." The doctor nodded, smiled, and walked out of the room. Harry waited a good couple of seconds after he left before he jumped out of the bed. He ignored the stiffness in his muscles and quickly located his clothes, which was in one of the drawers in the table, and changed out of his hospital gown and put them on. He sighed in relief when he felt his wand in his pocket. He walked toward the door, checked to make sure there wasn't a doctor I sight, and sneaked out of the room.

Once outside the hospital, Harry stood and let the hot sun beat down on him as he watched people bustling around the busy road. Parents on a school run, adults on their way to work, teenagers, walking and talking with their friends on their way to school. It was all normal and normal was usually good, but Harry knew there was something wrong with this. He looked around, he needed somewhere to clear his head and organize his thoughts. Spotting a park across the street, Harry made his way over there and crossed the road. Finding a bench to sit on, Harry began to try and figure out what was going on.

It wasn't that Harry wasn't happy to see people going on with there ordinary lives, he was ecstatic, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was, in the world he lived, nobody was able to live a _normal_ life. A couple of weeks after the ministry finally accepted the fact that Voldemort had returned, he began attacking. His attacks came out of nowhere and targeted areas where there was a high population of muggles. The ministry could do nothing about it; they were usually over before any aurors could even get there. Eventually the attacks spread to Europe, Voldemort was able to overpower and take over Bulgaria and Albania with unbelievable ease. The statue of secrecy had practically become nonexistent, it was impossible to keep the existence of wizards from muggles after the amount of attacks Voldemort directed at them. Needless to say, the muggles weren't happy. They didn't focus there anger and hate on Voldemort alone, no, they attacked all wizards, so on top of the war, wizards also found themselves having a civil war with muggles themselves. The war spread, even as far as America. The population was decreasing rapidly and everyone was living in fear, everyone was fighting for their lives, all because of one man. That's why Harry was so worried; nobody had time for this perfect life. The streets should have been deserted, people should have been in there homes, protecting there families. Not out buying ice cream and talking about the latest celebrity _it_ couple. He had a really bad feeling about this.

Harry turned his head and saw a phone box about three metres away. During his sixth year, Harry had visited America alongside Dumbledore, as a type of ambassador for the UK. He remembered that they had a unique way for contacting the American Ministry of Magic. As the country was so large, they had hooked up all the phone boxes in the country to the Ministry, meaning that if you called a specific number, it would put you through to someone from the American Ministry. Harry thought it was ingenious, especially during a war. A system like this could only give you more warning of an attack. Britain would never use such a system though, he recalled Fudge saying something about not having to resort to using _muggle_ means. A very Death Eater way of thinking, Harry thought.

Standing up, Harry quickly made his way to the phone box. They had used a number that any wizard would remember. It was the word Merlin, on the keypad. Pressing it quickly, Harry picked up the receiver and waited for an answer, hoped for an answer. After a few seconds, all he got was the dial tone. Letting anger get the better of him, he threw the receiver down and cursed loudly, causing several people to look at him disapprovingly before going on with there business.

Harry could only think of one more thing that he could try. During his sixth year, Dumbledore had given Harry a special portkey. Knowing that Harry had a habit of getting into trouble, he had given him a portkey that would take him directly to gates of Hogwarts, but Dumbledore had warned him that it could only be used once, in an emergency due to the power it took to get through the wards of Hogwarts. Harry ripped of the chain of a phoenix he was wearing, it was the portkey he had been given. He held it in his right hand, closed his fist and gripped it tightly.

"Hogwarts." He whispered.

Nothing happened.

"_Hogwarts_." He said slightly louder with gritted teeth, again nothing happened, "HOGWARTS!" He shouted out, with a hint of desperation in his voice. Again, several people turned to give him a strange look before continuing with whatever it was they were doing. Harry didn't give up and this time pulled out his wand and muttered a charm to see if there was any magic in an object. Again, he felt a strong pull on his magic making it a lot harder for him to cast the spell, but he ignored, he had other things to worry about now. The magic was there, working correctly. There was nothing wrong with the portkey, but it was like…it was like Hogwarts wasn't there.

Harry's blood ran cold with this thought, if Hogwarts wasn't there, then…where the hell did that red ball of magic take him? Only one possible thought crossed his mind.

He was in a different world.

That thought should have surprised him, but it didn't, if something like this was going to happen, it had to happen to Harry Potter.

Of course, even after defeating Dark Lords and Death Eaters, Basilisks and Dementors, Dragons and Giants, fate still found another way to screw with him. A thought crossed Harry's mind, a thought that made him shiver and had him feeling instantly guilty. Was it really such a bad thing? He had fought the war he was destined to fight, defeated his mortal enemy. Wasn't it his chance to take a break? Even with Voldemort dead, the world would still in chaos. Muggles would still want to kill every Wizard they could find and he was sure the millions of followers Voldemort had were just going to stop fighting for their cause. The world would be a mess and Harry Potter would be expected to lead the fight to fix it. Maybe this was his chance to take a break, to stop fighting, to try and live a normal life. With that thought, Harry scoffed loudly, what did he know about living a normal life?

Another thought crossed Harry's mind. Could he really leave the people he loved in that sort of world on his own? Could he really accept that he would never see them again in his pursuit of a normal life? Ron, Ginny, Neville, Remus, Tonks, all the Weasleys, Luna. Can he live with himself if he just left them there?

Of course he couldn't. These were the people that had fought beside him. Followed him wherever he led them, the people who had never believed the crap the Prophet published about him. The people he leant on when he needed help, support and advice. He knew that he would have to go back, but how? Did this world even have magic? They had vampires so presumably…

Of course they did!

He had forgotten that when he first woke up, chained to the wall in that apartment. There were magic books there! He didn't think that was anything important at the time, but if they knew of magic, maybe they could help him. Would they even help him? Well…there was only one way to find out. But first, he needed a shower and a change of clothes.

***

Giles walked through Sunnydale hospital, hoping to get the chance to speak to the mysterious stranger that had shown up who had called himself, Harry. He had been out cold for three days and showed no signs of waking up. Giles had been there to visit him every day since he brought him here. Patient was one thing he was not. He had many questions for the young man, and those questions just would not wait. The magic the boy had, producing that fireball with such ease; Giles had never seen anything like it. The boy said he was human, and all evidence backed that case up, but he had never seen a human be that fast or that strong before. Giles had to know who he was, he just had to. Once he got to the room, he was surprised to see nobody in there. Maybe the boy had woken up; maybe the Doctors had him and were running some sort of test. He doubted that would release him after he just woke up.

"Excuse me," Giles said as he stopped one of the doctors who were walking past, "The boy who was in this room. Where is he?"

"This room?" The doctor question, Giles nodded, "We don't know. He woke up and disappeared, we didn't even get a name out of him."

Giles sighed, took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "Ok, thanks," he muttered. The doctor nodded and walked past him. So he had done a runner. He hung his head in defeat; his only hope now was if the boy came to find him, and somehow, he seriously doubted that would ever happen.

***

Half an hour later, Harry had found a decent looking motel. He paused before going in; it would look suspicious if he turned up with a suitcase or something. Spotting an alleyway around the corner, Harry turned and made his way into it. Once there, he pulled a small box out of his pocket. After checking once more to make sure no one was looking, he pulled out his wand and muttered a charm under his breath. He put the box on the ground and watched as it grew in size. Fortunately, Harry had taken to carrying around his trunk with him, just in case he ever had to leave Hogwarts quickly. That was just as well as he didn't want to be stuck in a different world without any of his belongings. Perhaps even more fortunately for him, he had taken to carrying large amounts of money in his trunk as well, just in case he had to go into hiding on short notice and had to live in the muggle world. He was sure he had at least a hundred grand in all major forms of currency, including Pounds, Dollars, Euros and Yen.

The spell had taken a lot of energy out of Harry though and he found himself leaning against the wall trying to catch his breath. The problem with his magic was really worrying him. Granted, he had other ways of protecting himself, but still, having the use of magic was a luxury he didn't want to lose. Sighing, he pushed off the wall and opened his trunk. It had been magically enhanced so it didn't take him long to find his money, considering he was in America, Harry pulled out about five hundred dollars and promised himself that he would get the rest of his money changed into dollars. He didn't know how long he was going to be here for after all. Harry stuffed the money into his pocket and closed the trunk. Lifting it up, Harry found himself glad he had previously put charms on the trunk to make it weightless. Trunk in hand, he walked to the motel. Walking inside, Harry was glad to see that it was nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would be exceedingly expensive, just normal. Harry loved normal. Ten minutes later, Harry had paid one hundred and fifty dollars for a room for a week. Thanking the man, he turned and headed toward his room, number 3. As he expected, the room was plain, consisting of just a bed, a wardrobe, a small TV and two doors leading to a bathroom and kitchen. Dropping his trunk on the floor, Harry immediately began to peel of his clothes and headed toward the direction of the shower.

An hour later, Harry stood by the door to his new room feeling a lot more relaxed. After a long hot shower, Harry had changed into some clean clothes. He was now wearing a fitted white t shirt, black jeans and a light black jacket. He was once again wearing the portkey chain. Not because it would work, but it reminded him of Hogwarts, it reminded him of home. He had a plan to find his way back to the house, all he had to do was ask someone for directions back to Ridgeway cemetery and he was pretty sure he could remember his way back from there. He just hoped they didn't try and kill him on the spot once he got there.

***

Giles sat in his house with books surrounding him, as per usual. What wasn't as usual was the fact that he had five teenagers in his house as well, all seated around his television. Buffy, Willow, Oz, Xander and Cordelia all sat, seemingly mesmerized by the b rate move they were watching. There was a tension that everyone in the room (except maybe Oz) could feel. Willow and Xander still hadn't forgiven Buffy for leaving the way she did at the end of the last semester. They both felt that she had abandoned her mother, friends and her role as a Slayer by leaving Sunnydale for the entire summer, and Giles couldn't help but agree with them. Before summer, the three of them were as close as any friends you could find, but now, both Xander and Willow sat, cuddled up with the respective other halves, leaving Buffy looking rather isolated in the middle of the chair. Nobody wanted to talk about the issue but without talking about it, they remained in an awkward silence and instead chose to watch the film. Giles was brought out from his thoughts as the door bell rang.

"Pizza!" Xander exclaimed. Xander had spent the last ten minutes trying to convince Giles to allow him to order pizza; the teenager's appetite seemed to be unbelievable.

"You only just ordered it," Willow pointed out, "It couldn't possibly get here that quick."

Xander shrugged, "Maybe the pizza delivery guy is a vampire,"

"It's still light out," Buffy replied.

"Well who else would it be," Xander argued, "Were all already here and Giles isn't exactly Mr popularity," Xander seemed to just realize that Giles was in the room and a few seconds later, remembered he was still in his house, "No offense," he muttered, with a sheepish grin toward Giles.

Giles didn't say anything and just stood up, "I'll just go and answer it, shall I?" he walked out of the room and heard Xander make another muttered comment. Ignoring, he walked to the door and pulled it open, his mouth almost dropped open at what he saw.

***

Harry stood outside a house. He was pretty sure it was the right house, not a hundred percent sure, but pretty sure. Deciding to just get it over with, Harry walked forward and pressed the doorbell, and waited. For several moments, all he heard was talking, muffled by the door, until eventually it swung open and revealed the older man he remembered from the graveyard. Harry noticed that he seemed to be quite surprised to see him, and smiled slightly.

"Hey," Harry greeted while rubbing his head, this was going to be slightly awkward, "Giles…right?"

The man nodded but continued to observe him, "You ran away from the hospital." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

Harry raised an eyebrow, "You've been checking up on me." Again, it wasn't a question.

"I just wanted to make sure you didn't do anything stupid," Giles said, "Like dying."

Harry smiled slightly, "Well…I'm not dead."

"No, you're not." A silence, an awkward, long, stretching silence.

"I need you're help." Harry blurted out, partly to end the silence, partly because it needed to be said anyway.

"My help?" Giles questioned, that certainly wasn't what he was expecting.

"Well, you know about magic, don't you?" Giles hesitated for a second before nodding, "Then you're the only person I know of that can help me."

Giles just stood there silently, as if he was assessing him, before shaking his head, "I have no reason to trust you and it's an unwritten rule in Sunnydale that you don't invite someone you don't trust into you're home."

Harry sighed, he was expecting this. He reached into his pocket and watched as Giles tensed and seemed to get ready to defend himself; he pulled out his wand and tossed it to him. Giles caught it easily. "That's my wand. It's what I used to create the sunlight to destroy that vampire in the graveyard. It's the only weapon I have on me." Normally, Harry would never give anyone his wand. However, these were special circumstances, he needed help, plus he didn't think the wand would help him very much in a fight at the moment, not the way his magic has been recently.

Giles held the wand in his hand and stared at it. In all honesty, he was going to let him in anyway. He had to admit, he was curious about the boy; more curious now that he came to him for help he was even more curious. Giles nodded and moved aside, allowing Harry to enter his home.

Harry walked into the lounge to find a group of people there. The same group from the graveyard, plus another girl he had never seen before.

"Who was it Giles?" the red head, Harry remembered to be called Willow asked, before she turned around and her face paled slightly, "You're not Giles…"

"What gave me away?" Harry asked sarcastically. The others all turned around to see him standing there and their faces ranged from distrust to curious. Buffy even took it upon herself to get to her feet and fall into a fighting stance, ready to defend herself and her friends if she had too.

"Relax Buffy," Giles said as he re-entered the room, "I do not believe Harry is here for a fight,"

"Then what is he here for?" Buffy asked, but no one answered. Maybe because nobody got a chance as the girl Harry didn't recognise, a dark haired, very pretty girl, stood up and held her hand out for Harry.

"Cordelia Chase." She introduced herself, holding out her hand. Her eyes were wandering around Harry's body, checking him out.

Harry took her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it softly. Long gone were the days when he would be embarrassed and not know how to act around girls. Know, Harry would consider himself to flirt a little bit too much, not that he minded. "Harry Potter." He replied. The young man, Harry remembered to be called Xander jumped to his feet and pushed himself between Harry and Cordelia.

"Stop checking out my girlfriend," he warned, shielding Cordelia from Harry as if he was about to jump on her.

Harry raised an eyebrow, "She's _your_ girlfriend?"

Xander nodded and straightened himself up and made himself look as intimidating as he could, "Yeah,"

"Wow," Harry muttered before chuckling slightly, "You did well,"

Xander grinned widely, "Thanks," he said before his face changed into a confused expression, "I think…"

"I think Harry came here for help," Giles interrupted, trying to get the subject back on course.

"Help with what?" Cordelia asked before she groaned slightly, "Don't tell me you're into the whole vampire freak show too?"

Xander cleared his throat and muttered, "He's the guy I told you about from the cemetery the other day,"

"Oh," Cordelia muttered, "Hey, so you saved Xander's life!" she exclaimed suddenly,

Harry face scrunched up into confusion, "I did?"

"Glad to see my life meant so much to you…" Xander muttered,

"Why did you do that anyway?" Willow asked, "I mean, Xander was about to die and everything and then you show up and made fire and burnt the vampire, which was really cool bye the way, and then you got all angry about being chained up…" Willow rambled.

Harry thought about the simplest way to answer that question. He didn't want to explain about his whole problem about having to be the hero so instead he just muttered, "I just don't like vampires."

Buffy just scoffed, "Who does?"

"Other vampires," Xander suggested,

"Anyway," Giles said loudly, once again trying to get the conversation back on track, "You wanted help Harry."

"Oh…yeah…right…" Harry stammered, thinking of the best way to start this, "Have you ever heard of Hogwarts?"

"Hogwarts?" Buffy repeated, "Sounds like a disease."

"No, I haven't," Giles answered, ignoring Buffy's comment, "Is that some sort of demon?"

Demon? That's the second time he had heard them use that word and Harry still had no idea what a demon was. "What is a demon?" At that point, everybody in the room stopped whatever it was they were doing and stared at Harry as if he was crazy, "Okay, you guys are looking at me as if I just told you that I eat children," he stated, but the disbelieving looks was still there.

"But you said you hated vampires," Buffy pointed out, "How could you even know what a vampire is if you don't know what a demon is?"

"I've never seen a vampire like the one I fought in the graveyard before," Harry answered, "They're defiantly not where I'm from,"

Giles continued to look at him oddly, "And where do you come from?"

"England, originally," Harry answered, "But I've spent most of my last seven years in Scotland,"

"You're British!" Willow exclaimed before she frowned slightly, "But you don't sound English."

Harry just glanced at her, "I haven't got much of an accent,"

"They have vampire and demons in England and Scotland," Giles assured,

"Ah…you see…I may not have been clear when I said, _where I'm from_," Harry said, he could see by the looks on their faces that they all were all lost, except Giles who seemed to catch on to what Harry meant.

"Oh…you're not from here, are you?" Giles asked, although he already knew the answer.

"Of course not, he's from England," Cordelia stated before turning around and glaring at Giles, "Don't you ever listen?"

"He's not just from England Cordelia," Giles said with a grave look in his eye, "You're from another world, aren't you?"

Silence echoed through the room. Harry for the most part, just stood there silently, waiting for someone to say something. Buffy seemed to relax a little more and didn't look like she was about to jump him at any moment. Cordelia didn't have any change in her outward demeanour, in fact, she looked bored if anything. Willow was looking at him with amazement, wondering how it was possible to do such a thing. Xander just looked plain surprised while Oz kept a look of indifference on his face.

"How is that even possible?" Buffy asked eventually,

Harry sighed, "Long story short, I was fighting a bad guy, he produced a spell…"

"Magic!" Willow squealed, "You know magic! I can do magic. What sort of stuff can you do? Can you show me?" Willow asked quickly,

Harry smiled, he was beginning to like her, "Maybe later," he replied. Willow deflated a little but smiled brightly at him nonetheless.

"But I've never seen anyone perform magic with this," Giles stated, pulling out Harry's wand,

"Really?" Harry questioned, "I thought you had all those magic books…"

"But none of those need the use of a…stick." Giles interrupted.

"Wand," Harry corrected absentmindedly, "Can I have a look?" Giles nodded and Harry walked across the room and glanced at some of the books. "Wow," he muttered, "They're all so dark. Rituals, blood magic, resurrection…have you people never heard of a cheering charm?" At the blank looks on their faces, he shook his head, "Obviously not."

"You were fighting a bad guy?" Buffy questioned suddenly, "And why would you be doing that? You don't look like much of a fighter."

Harry just glanced at her and grinned, "Neither do you." Both of them shared a look for a second. Harry distinctly remembered being very impressed by the way she fought, you defiantly couldn't tell she was a fighter by looking at her; but she did have the most beautiful eyes…

"And how is it that you ended up falling from the sky in another world?" Giles asked,

Harry shook away his thoughts and answered, "He used some blood magic which could have killed a lot of people but we shared the same blood so I could stop it."

"So you were related?" Oz asked,

"No," Harry shook his head, disgusted at the thought of being related to Voldemort, "He stole some of my blood,"

"How did he steal you're blood?" Xander asked before he shook his head, "No, no, why would he want to steal your blood?"

"It's really not important," Harry said quickly, "All that matters is that he created this red…ball…type…thing…I walked into it and next thing you know, I wake up chained to a wall." Harry paused and ignored the others in the room for a second, "Look, I just want to go home. You're the only people I know here that even know that magic exists, I have no one else I can go to. Can you help me?"

Giles looked sympathetically at Harry and answered as honestly as he could. "We can try Harry, we can try."

***

**Please leave me a review and let me know what you think, it will only take a few seconds. Anyway, this chapter was going to be longer but I cut it in half to update quicker. Remember to let me know on what pairing you want. Until next time!**


	5. Groundwork

**A.N Wow, this chapter was a killer to write, I literally had to force myself to finish it off. Not sure I like it though. Anyway, some parts of this chapter is taken directly from the season three episode Dead Man's Party. I've tried to write this so prior knowledge of what happened at the end of season two isn't necessary but it would probably help if you knew that that is when the chapter is set. **

**CHAPTER FIVE:** _Groundwork_

Ten minutes later, none of the teens in the room (except for Harry) were surprised to see Giles surrounding himself with a bunch of books. He had walked over to the bookcase immediately after saying he would help Harry. He had browsed through the spines, muttering and thinking about which ones would be helpful to him and which ones wouldn't be.

"Can I help?" Harry asked, feeling a little bit guilty watching the man he barely knew trying to work out a way to help him. Giles didn't even look up from the book he was reading and instead handed Harry a rather thick book.

"Skim through this," Giles said, "It may give us an idea on the type of magic we would have to use." Harry raised his eyebrows at the size of the book but said nothing and sat opposite the old man and opened it. Just as he was about to start to read, Giles began to speak again, "I believe there is a spell which is fairly common and easy to use that can be used to pull people and send them back to other realities, the only problem with it is that the caster of the spell would have to send the person back and as we don't have the caster present…"

"Which is a good thing," Harry muttered,

"I doubt the spell would work," Giles finished.

"Couldn't you try it anyway?" Willow asked, most of the others had gone back to watching the film, but as they didn't really want to talk to each other and the film was pretty boring, they settled to listening on the conversation, "I mean, it couldn't hurt, could it?"

Giles shook his head, "Before any sort of spell is attempted proper research must be done. There's already one major difference between our world and Harry's and that's the magic, we just don't know what effect it could have on Harry."

Harry, who had opened the book and only read a few lines, looked up at Giles with a tired look on his face, "You're right."

Giles gave Harry a strange look, "Why am I right?"

Harry sighed and explained, "Because, I've just started reading this book and I can already that the magic here is completely different. Here it looks like that magic is raw magic taken from the Earth itself. In my world every wizard…"

Xander snorted, "Wizard?"

Harry just gave Xander a dirty look, "Yes, wizard," he turned back to Giles and continued, "In my world, every wizard has there own magical core. There own pool of magic within them to use."

Giles leaned forward, his curiosity peaked, "So everybody in you're world has their own personal supply of magic?"

"No, not everybody," Harry replied, "Just some people, a small percentage of people actually."

"So you can't do the spell because it's using two different types of magic?" Willow asked, Harry nodded, "And they won't be…compatible?"

"Probably not," Harry shook his head.

"This is fascinating," Giles exclaimed, taking off his glasses.

"Not the correct use of the word fascinating," Cordelia commented, obviously bored by the conversation.

Giles ignored her and continued to question, "What else is different here?"

"Well…" Harry muttered in thought, "Well I've never seen a vampire who was trained by Bruce Lee before," he paused before adding, "And what the hell is a Demon?"

Buffy seemed to be interesting in the turn of the conversation and turned around, "You really have no demon's in you're world?"

"Well…I don't really know what a demon is," Harry answered, "But if those Jackie Chan wannabe vampires are anything to go by then, no."

"A demon is a nonhuman life form that sometimes looks human who have no souls and are generally evil," Buffy explained, "They usually have super strength but abilities vary from demon to demon,"

"And those vampire's…"

"A type of demon," Buffy finished.

"Okay," Harry said, nodding, "And what does that make you?"

Buffy finally took her eyes of the television and faced Harry with a raised eyebrow. "Why does that make me anything?"

Harry just laughed, "Come on Buffy," he said, still grinning, "You're what, five six, one hundred and twenty pounds, there's no way you should be able to take one vampire let alone dust three of them."

Buffy just stared at him for a long, tense moment before blowing air from her pursed lips. "I already told you, I'm the slayer." Buffy held out her hand to stop Harry before he could make any comments, "Not a sailor…the slayer," she slowly, as if Harry was a child, "I'm not supposed to be on a boat anywhere, I'm not supposed to have an eye patch over one eye and a parrot on my shoulder…"

"Err…that's a pirate, Buffy," Xander pointed out.

Buffy shot him an irritated look before continuing, "The point still stands. I am Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

"The Vampire Slayer?" Harry questioned with an amused smirk, "So it's you're job to slay vampires?"

"Into each generation a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers. She is the Slayer." Giles explained,

Harry groaned, "Why does that sound suspiciously like a prophecy?" he said with a frown on her face.

"Why?" Xander asked, "Don't like prophecies?"

"Bad experience," Harry muttered vaguely, prompting Buffy to give him a strange look before continuing.

"It's the Slayer Prophecy," Giles told Harry, "And as you've probably realized it applies to Buffy."

Harry just glanced from Buffy to Giles, trying to tell if they were being serious or not. When it was clear that they were being deadly serious, Harry just laughed, "That is so stupid."

Everyone stopped whatever they were doing and gave Harry contrasting looks. Giles' was one of confusion, Buffy narrowed her eyes in irritation but Cordelia seemed to agree with him and grinned broadly. "I know!" she exclaimed, "Finally, someone with a bit of sense, why would you want to spend your time fighting freaks anyway?"

"I do hope you realize that it's my life you're calling stupid," Buffy stated, she was still glaring at Harry and waiting for some sort explanation from him.

"Well it is," Harry said, he realized what he said and quickly amended, "Not your life, I mean the whole prophecy thing."

Buffy didn't stop glaring at her, "You think fighting against unspeakable evil is _stupid_?!"

"Not that part either," Harry said offhandedly, "The whole, _one girl to stop the evil_, part, it's a bit melodramatic,"

Everyone was still looking at Harry as if he was crazy but it was Oz who spoke first, "Still not getting you're point Harry,"

Harry rolled his eyes, "One person can't fight a war against darkness," he explained, "It's impossible, and at the end of the day, it shouldn't be down to just one person to fight that war. Everyone can't just rely on you to defeat all evil single handedly and still have time to finish you're homework. That's a fight that…no matter how good you are…you can never win. Plus, it's not exactly fair on you now, is it?"

Buffy's glare relented slightly as she stared at the mysterious enigmatic newcomer. It was as if he had personal experience on something like this…

She pushed all her thoughts aside and spoke, "Is that your way of offering to help while you're help?"

Harry raised an eyebrow and smirked at her, "Is that your way of asking me to help," he countered, "You know, while I'm here,"

Giles cleared his throat loudly, interrupting the two, "Yes, Harry, while were back on the subject of you getting home, I wanted to make sure that you know that it could take us a while to successfully secure an avenue for you to get home. I wanted to know that you were suitably prepared…"

"Don't worry," Harry interrupted, knowing what Giles was getting at, "I have practically everything I own with me including some money to get by,"

Xander's ears perked up at this, "How much money?"

Harry laughed, "Enough,"

"But you didn't have any suitcases with you when you first came," Willow pointed out,

Harry turned to her and grinned, "Magic,"

"And," Giles said, "Why did you have all you're possessions with you?"

Harry let out a long breath and thought how best to answer that question, "It was a difficult time," he said slowly, "With Vol…the bad guy around, it was best to be able to make a quick escape," the group shared a nervous glance, each of them wanted to ask Harry what exactly had been going on in his world, but before any of them could, Harry stood up, "Anyway, it's getting late, and I should probably get some sleep."

"Okay Harry," Giles also stood, "Come back tomorrow after three and we can talk about some ideas on getting you home."

Harry nodded; "Sure," he turned and headed towards the door, but stopped and turned back to Giles. "Um…Giles…thanks for this,"

Giles shook his head, "Don't worry about it…"

"No," Harry said, "You didn't have to help me, so, thank you." He said, offering his hand to Giles. Giles took it and shook it firmly. With one more nod, he waved to the rest of the room, "Later guys," and he left.

"I like him," Cordelia announced once he left, after seeing Xander's look she added, "Not like that, but he seems cool."

"Yes, he is quite a…enigmatic…character," Giles said slowly before turning to Buffy, "You know, he could prove to be a very useful ally."

"Or a very powerful enemy," Buffy muttered, but everyone in the room heard her. Before anyone else could comment, Buffy spoke again, "So Giles…do you have any food in this place…you can't starve your slayer."

***

Harry woke up the next morning in an unfamiliar room. It took him a few seconds for his brain to wake up and remember where he was, he was out the motel room he had rented out. With a groan, Harry checked the time on the clock on a wall opposite his bed. It was only ten o clock. Harry sighed and realized that he had nothing to do, for the last two years; Harry had been kept busy and never had nothing to do. He had another five hours before he could go to Giles' apartment so that didn't leave him with much else to do with his day. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he stayed in bed, Harry got up, grabbed a towel and headed for the bathroom.

Walking back into the main room freshly showered and changed, Harry looked around the room, looking to see if there was anything useful he could be doing. He spared a small glance at the old television that was sitting in the corner of the room but shook his head slightly; he doubted that he would ever be as hooked on that as most people were. Walking toward his suitcase, Harry opened it up and took out a miniature box. Pulling out his wand and placing the box on the floor, he muttered a charm and watched as the box grew in size until it became the size of a small table. Harry was smiling, not because of the box but instead because the spell actually worked. It seemed as if his magic was finally recovering. It wasn't perfect; in fact it was far from. He still felt that strain on his magic while using it, only it had lightened somewhat. Opening the box, Harry began to pull out various weights. If he didn't have anything else to do, he may as well keep on top of his training.

***

The next day Giles, Xander, Cordelia, Oz and Willow were sitting in Giles apartment. Giles had put his search of a spell to help out Harry on hold for a while as he tried to find out why a cat Buffy had buried had come back to life. Of course the others were less interested in research and instead had taken to staring at the cat which had been contained in a small cage.

"It looks dead, it smells dead, yet it's moving around," Oz commented. He was closest to the cage, staring at it and poking a few fingers through the bars. "That's interesting."

Cordelia was standing behind him with her arms crossed, looking at the cat with mild disgust evident on her face, "Nice pet Giles," she said sarcastically, "Don't you like anything regular? Golf? USA today?"

Giles sighed and began to explain what he had been explaining for the last twenty minutes. "I'm trying to discover how and why it rose from the grave. It's not as if I'm going to be offering it a warm saucer of milk."

"Well I like it," Oz said, still staring at the un-dead cat, "I think you should call it patches,"

Willow, was the only one out of the group that was actually making an effort with helping Giles with his research. She looked up suddenly though and changed the subject of conversation completely, "What about Buffy's welcome home dinner tonight?" Buffy's mother, Joyce, had invited them all round for dinner later on that night to celebrate Buffy's return, although all of them were still slightly annoyed with her and didn't really feel in the mood for celebrating anything. "I told her mum we'd help out," Willow continued, "Bring stuff…"

"Onion dip." Cordelia stated suddenly while sitting down. Everybody else looked up from what they were doing and gave her a curious look,

"You've got to admire the purity of it," Xander stated after a few moments silence.

"What?" Cordelia said after she finally noticed the looks she was getting, "Onion dip? Stirring, not cooking, it's what I bring."

"We should figure out what kind of deal this is," Oz said, finally taking attention of Cordelia, "I mean, is it a gathering, a shindig or a hootnanny?"

This time, it was Oz's turn to get the strange looks. "What's the difference?" Cordelia asked,

"Well a gathering is…_brie_," Oz said after taking a moment to figure out the best way to describe it, "Shindig, dip," he said with a pointed look at Cordelia who smiled brightly, "And hootnanny? Choc full of hoot and just a little bit of nanny,"

The cat made a strange groaning type sound which took everyone's focus off the conversation for a split second. "Well, I hate brie," Xander commented,

"I know," Cordelia agreed, "It smells like Giles' cat."

Giles lifted his head from his book once more, "It's not my…"

"And what will we talk about at a gathering anyway?" Xander questioned, cutting off Giles from saying again that it wasn't his cat. "So Buffy, did you meet any pimps on your travels? Oh, and by the way, thanks for ruining our lives for the last three months."

"Xander…" Willow warned,

Xander sighed, "You know what I mean," he said, "She doesn't want to talk about it and we don't want to talk about it, so why don't we just shut up and dance?"

All the teenagers glanced at each other, all of them silently agreeing with Xander. "Well, Buffy did say she wanted to loosen up," Willow said, "You know, have some kid time." She glanced across the table she was working on and looked at Oz who was once again staring at the cat. "Are you guys rehearsing tonight? Why don't you play at the party?"

Oz nodded, "Yeah, I think I could supply some dingo action."

It was then Giles finally decided to protest, "Err…I'm not sure a…err…shindig…"

"Hootnanny," Oz corrected,

Giles nodded, "Hootnanny is really the order of the day. Maybe something a little more intimate, I mean Buffy has just got home, I'm sure she's still feeling a little disorientated."

"All the more reason to make her feel welcome," Willow argued, "And a big party says welcome Buffy."

Xander reached around and clapped Giles on the back, "Okay, so one vote from the old guy on a stuffy, cheese night, and how much votes for actual fun?" Unfortunately for Giles, Willow, Cordelia and Oz all raised there hands.

"Fine, fine," Giles conceded, "Have it your way. I for one am just glad that Buffy is home."

Everyone nodded and went back to what there were they were doing before Willow had brought Buffy up. Giles and Willow went back to researching the mystery of the cat, Oz and Xander went back to staring at the cat and Cordelia sat down and stared into space. They were snapped out of their own private thoughts a moment later when the door bell rang. Soundlessly, Giles stood up to open the door and moments later, he reappeared with Harry just behind him.

"Hey, the whole gang's here," Harry said as he stood in the room, he glanced around once more before adding, "Except Blondie,"

"Word of advice," Xander said, "I really wouldn't call her that to her face, she has a tendency to get violent when people say that."

Harry nodded but was distracted by the strange smell in the room. "If you're wondering what the smell is, it's Giles' cat." Cordelia pointed out.

Giles glared at Cordelia, "For the last time…"

"Giles, you could at least bath it once in a while," Harry commented, he had caught sight of the cat still locked in the cage and joined Oz and Xander in staring at it. "It looks kind of…"

"Dead?" Xander supplied, Harry nodded, "That's because it is."

Harry wasn't really interesting and was instead fascinated by the cat. He poked a finger between the metal bars in an attempt to stroke the cat, only for it to hiss later and lunge for it, Harry was quick enough to get his hand out of the way though. He looked up and glanced at Giles who staring at Xander with a mixture of frustration and irritation. "You have a dead cat?"

Giles shifted his look from Xander to Harry who was looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "It is not my cat; I'm just trying to find out why it rose from the grave."

Harry's look changed from mild amusement to confusion, "It seriously came back to life?"

Giles nodded, "So it would seem."

"How is that even possible?" Harry asked while walking behind Oz and Cordelia and falling into a chair next to her.

"How is possible that you're here?" Giles retorted.

Harry nodded, it was a good point, "Speaking of which, did you find anything?"

"As a matter of fact I did," Giles said, he saw the smile and glint in Harry's eye and quickly shook his head, "Don't get to excited, its not exactly good news. I was able to come across the spell which does send people back to the realities they were pulled from, however as I feared it only works when the caster of the magic used to send the person to another reality also casts the same magic to send them back." Harry's face fell. So that idea was out, it was Voldemort who created that big red ball and Harry would be more worried if Voldemort was around to help get Harry home.

He shook away negative thoughts and continued, "I had an idea that there would be a problem like that," Harry muttered, "I figured that the best way to reverse it would to replicate the spell that the…bad guy…used and simply walk through it."

Giles took of his glasses and rubbed his eyes, "I can see a big problem with that."

"You can only see one?" Harry questioned, "I can see dozens,"

"Like what?" Oz asked. Harry turned his head away from Giles and was quite surprised to see that Xander, Willow, Oz and Cordelia were all following the conversation with interest.

"Well for one, the magic that Vol…the bad guy used was very volatile," Harry explained, "If anything goes wrong than I could potentially…well…it wouldn't be very good."

"But could you do it?" Giles pressed, "In theory, of course,"

Harry hesitated, "Maybe," he answered slowly.

"Way to sit on the fence there Harry," Xander commented, but was ignored by the entire room.

"Why couldn't you?" Giles asked again,

"Well…assuming of course that I can even discover the spell that Voldemort used which will be difficult enough on its own," Harry said, "I would need to put a substantial amount of magical power to be able to perform. Usually, I probably could, but since I arrived here, my magic has been wrong."

"What do you mean by wrong?" Willow asked,

Harry sighed and thought about the best way to explain it, "Well…since I've been here…I think my magical core has become _disjointed_." He said slowly, "My magic's still there and I can access it, but it takes a lot more effort to draw out my power then before. It's gotten better since I've had a chance to rest but…"

"Maybe I could perform it," Willow interrupted with a bright smile on her face, "I mean, I can do magic too. I'm sure after a bit of practice I could probably…"

"No!" Harry said loudly, he could see that he surprised everyone by his outburst but was most concerned about Willow's downcast look, "Only because the magic between here and my world is different and with this sort of spell I really don't think it would be a good idea to mix them," he sent her a reassuring smile, "and I really don't know what it would do to me."

Willow nodded in understanding, but it was Cordelia that spoke next, "So you're probably going to be here for a while?" Harry nodded, Cordelia continued to beam at him, "Then you should come tonight!"

"Tonight?" Harry questioned,

"Yeah," Xander nodded, "Were having this welcome home party for Buffy at her house tonight,"

Harry still looked confused, "Welcome home?"

Willow stopped Xander before he said anything and spoke herself, "It's a long story," she said rather flippantly,

"Buffy ran away," Oz said simply,

"Apparently not that short," Willow said sheepishly,

"So…" Cordelia continued, "Are you going to come?"

Harry looked far from convinced and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, "I don't know…maybe…I'm not exactly friends with her and…"

"Oh come on Harry," Xander interrupted, "You've been here about five days now, right? Have you even done anything fun yet?" Harry opened his mouth but Xander raised a finger to stop him speaking, "And dusting vampires doesn't count."

Harry glanced around the room and saw Cordelia's hopeful look, Xander and Willow's expectant ones and Oz's…well…Oz just looked indifferent. Harry held out his hands and gave up, "Fine, I'll come."

"Great," Willow beamed before closing the book she was reading and standing up, "But we better go and get things sorted for tonight." Xander and Oz nodded and stood up to leave as well, Cordelia seemed to be happy to sit there and stare of into space.

"That means you too Cordelia," Xander stated. Cordelia looked like she was about to protest but just sighed and stood up,

"See you later Harry," she said as she stood up and walked out of the room, followed by Xander, Willow and Oz.

***

Harry spent most of the evening with Giles. While they were both reading and trying to figure out ways to get Harry home, they had eventually digressed and began talking about the differences between both worlds. Harry had to explain to Giles the differences between vampires here and vampires in his world and Giles explained to Harry all about the Watcher's council and the best way to kill vampires and defend himself if he had too, and knowing what Harry's reputation was like, it was going to happen eventually. The light heartedness of the conversation stopped though when Giles turned the page of the book he was reading and his face instantly whitened.

Harry visibly tensed up and looked around, expecting some sort of attack, "What's wrong?"

"I know how the cat rose from the grave," Giles whispered, his face still paled.

Just by looking at Giles, Harry knew something was seriously wrong. He began to finger his wand, so he was ready to draw it at any moment. "How?"

"The mask," Giles paused before explaining, "Joyce…Buffy's mother…recently acquired a mask. I've just found out that the mask contains the power of a Nigerian zombie demon,"

"So the mask brought the cat back to life?" Harry questioned,

Giles pulled of his glasses and rubbed his eyelids, "Yes,"

"Which means it's safe to assume that other bodies have been raised…zombies?" Harry asked again, Giles nodded, "And I'm guessing they're after the mask?"

"That's right," Giles stated while standing up and rushing to the phone and made a call. Harry remained where he was and listened as Giles tried to make an unsuccessful phone call to Buffy. After slamming the receiver down, Giles muttered something which sounded suspiciously like _Bloody Americans_ and turned to face Harry again.

"I have to get over there and warn her," he said while looking for his car keys.

"I think you're going to be a little late," Harry said before pointing to the window and looking out into the night sky. "They're probably already almost there,"

Giles began pacing, pure panic and fear getting the better of him. Rubbing his face with both his hands, he sighed and looked at Harry with a hopeful expression on his face, "I could use your help," he said, with a hint of desperation in his face.

Harry smiled, "Of course I'm going to help, it's the least I could do," he explained, "Besides, if there are innocent lives at stakes I can't just leave it,"

Giles nodded and smiled slightly before finally finding his keys and heading toward the door, "Come on, we have to leave now,"

"No," Harry said quickly, "I can get there a lot quicker, but you're going to have to trust me,"

Giles looked slightly hesitant, "What do you need me to do?"

"Close you're eyes and picture Buffy's house," Harry instructed. With one more pointed look at Harry, Giles nodded and closed his eyes. Harry pulled out his wand and waved it once.

_Leglimens_

Suddenly Harry could see a picture of a large house, he smiled a small smile knowing that was all he needed. "I'll meet you there Giles," Harry said and Giles opened his eyes just in time to see Harry disappear with a loud pop.

***

When Harry opened his eyes again, he found himself struggling not to vomit. While apparition never felt good, that one made him feel sicker than he had ever felt. He also felt that it had taken a lot more out of him to apparate than it usually would, it was probably due to his magic still not working as well as it should be. Harry had no time to ponder this or try and recover as he immediately felt a fist connect with his jaw. Harry stumbled back and clutched his jaw.

"Ouch," he muttered to himself before straightening up and looking at what had attacked him. Zombies were the correct word for them, dozens of them stood in front of him, glaring at him as he stood in front of Buffy's house. They all looked different types of disfigured, which was understandable as they were all technically dead, but one thing they all had in common was the fact that they were all glaring at Harry. "Okay," Harry said loudly, "Which one of you hit me?" A zombie who was standing at the front of the grouped lunged forward and tried to attack him. Harry wouldn't be caught off guard again though and quickly drew his wand and pointed it at the zombie.

_Reducto!_

The red light emerged from Harry's wand and hit the zombie in its stomach. Harry felt that now all too familiar tug of his magic but ignored it as his Reducto curse went straight through the zombie, leaving a hole in its mid section. The zombie stood for a second, staring out the now rather large hole in its middle, before shrugging and continuing its attack on Harry. Harry didn't give his shock a chance to register and just flicked his wand again.

_Diffindo!_

The spell hit the zombie dead on again and caused a deep cut to form in its torso and shoulders. Unfortunately, the zombie had no blood to bleed and again Harry's attack seemed to have no affect on it. The zombie was no only inches away and with no other choice; Harry decked the zombie with a strong right hand before stepping on it with his right foot, keeping it pinned on the ground. The other zombies all seemed to get bored quickly and they all charged at Harry at once. Harry knew that he would have revert to using…creative…means, and with that thought it mind, he pointed his wand to a large pile of stones in the corner and levitated them in the air before flicking his wand again, launching them toward the zombies. This attack worked perfectly and the zombies were sent flying back by the barrage of stones. It didn't defeat them, just delayed them for a while.

Harry found himself out of breath. He had used to much magic to quickly, his magic was only just recovering and was no where near the strength it was at before he got pulled into this world. While he had the chance to have a breather, Harry glanced inside one of the windows of Buffy's house to see the familiar faces of Buffy, Xander, Willow and Oz all standing there talking.

"Oh, perfect time for a conversation," Harry muttered sarcastically. The zombie he had pinned attacked him suddenly, grabbing Harry's foot and pulling it, making Harry land hard on his back. He quickly tried to get back to his feet but the zombie was quicker and kicked his arm, knocking the wand from his hand. Before Harry could do anything else, the zombie grabbed him by his throat and threw him backwards, straight through a window and into a rather intense conversation.

***

The welcome home party was in full swing at the Summer's home, but unfortunately for Buffy she found herself feeling completely out of place during it. She knew that everything still wasn't cool between her and her family and friends, but she thought they could all get past it tonight, but with Willow avoiding her and Xander spending all of his time with Cordelia, she knew it wasn't working. After hearing her mum say to her new best friend Pat that things were worse with Buffy back, she made a snap decision and stormed upstairs to pack again. She was caught by Willow though and eventually her mum, not wanting to get caught up in an argument she stormed down the stairs and back into the party. Her mum followed her though and grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"That's it young lady, you and I are going to have a talk," Joyce said, anger and sadness coming through in her voice. The music stopped though, meaning every there could hear the conversation, something Buffy wasn't entirely happy about.

Buffy glanced around, seeing all the people staring at her she muttered, "Mum…please…"

"I don't care," Joyce continued, "I don't care what your friends think about me or you for that matter because you put me through the ringer Buffy. I mean it, and I've had enough. Do you have any idea what's it's been like?" Buffy tried to speak but Joyce just continued, "You can't imagine months…months of not knowing whether you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere or…I don't know…living it up,"

Buffy seemed to lose her temper and didn't particularly care about who else was around to hear, "But you told me," she said, "You're the one who said I should go. You said if I leave this house, don't come back, you found out who I really was and you couldn't deal…don't you remember?" By now people were beginning to sneak out of the party, not wanting to get themselves involved in the domestic issues which were being raised.

"You didn't give me time," Joyce argued, "You just dumped this thing on me and expected me to get but guess what, mum's not perfect, okay, I handled it badly, but that doesn't give you the write to punish you by running away."

"Punish you?" Buffy repeated, "I didn't do this to punish you,"

It wasn't Joyce who spoke this time; it was Xander with a rare serious expression on his face. "Well you did." Xander stepped forward so he was only just behind Joyce, "You should have seen what you put her through,"

Buffy scoffed, "Okay, thanks, anyone else want to weigh in here?" she said, looking around the emptying room,

"Maybe you don't want to hear it Buffy," Xander continued, "But taking off how you did was incredibly selfish and rude."

"Okay, I screwed up, I know this," Buffy redirected her anger to Xander now, "You have no idea what happened to me…or what I was feeling,"

"Did you even try talking to anybody?" Xander asked,

"There was nothing that anybody could do," Buffy argued, "I just had to deal with it on my own."

"And you see how well that worked out," Xander commented, "You can't just bury stuff Buffy, it will just come right back up to get you,"

"As if I could even have gone to you Xander," Buffy said, her voice was quieter but anger was still clear on her face, "You made you're feelings about Angel and I perfectly clear,"

"Look," Xander said clearly, "I'm sorry that you're honey was a demon, but most girls don't run because of boy troubles,"

"Chill it Xander," Cordelia interrupted, standing in front of her boyfriend, "Put yourself in Buffy's shoes for just a minute. Okay, I'm Buffy, freak of nature, right? Naturally I pick a freak for a boyfriend and then he goes on a killing spree which is pretty much my fault…"

"Cordelia," Buffy interrupted, "Get out of my shoes,"

"I'm just trying to help Buffy," she said before she stepped backwards, once again behind Xander.

"Buffy…you…" Willow began,

Buffy turned her head and stopped her before she could even get her words out, "Willow…please…I can't take this from you too,"

"Let her finish!" Xander said firmly, "You at least owe her that."

"God Xander," Buffy breathed, "Do you at least think you could stick to annoying me on your own behalf,"

Xander looked a little insulted, "Fine, you stop acting like an idiot, I'll stop annoying you."

"Oh," Buffy said, steeping forward so she was closer to Xander, "You want to talk acting like an idiot, Slayer?"

"Okay," Oz said, stepping between Xander and Buffy and placing a hand on each shoulder, "Going to step in now and be referee guy,"

"No, let them go Oz," Willow said, tugging at his shoulder, "Talking about it isn't helping we might as well try some violence." Like a cruel twist of fate, just as well said that, a loud crashing sound could be heard and a figure went flying through the window. "I was just being sarcastic," Willow muttered to herself in shock.

Everyone was frozen still, watching as the figure got back to his feet and dusted himself of from glass. It was only when he lifted up his head; they could see it was Harry.

"You came!" Cordelia seemed brightly, ignoring the fact that he had just fallen through a window,

Buffy didn't forget, "You couldn't use the door!" she said in a voice that was slightly higher than she expected,

"Sorry," Harry defended, "I was a little bit busy,"

Buffy continued to glare at him, "With what?" In a second twist of fate in as many seconds, windows and doors burst out of their frames as the zombies stormed into the house, all of them looking for the mask. Harry saw several people trying to get out of the house but concentrated on the zombies coming toward him. He had lost his wand in the battle outside and because of this; he would have to work without it for now. Two zombies lunged toward him and Harry found himself jumping over the large couch to get away from them. Before the zombies could jump the couch as well, Harry kicked the couch backwards, causing it to hit the zombies and make them fall to the floor. Harry turned to see Buffy struggling against a zombie in the corner and grabbed what looked to be a large poker for a fireplace and tossed it at the zombie. It landed in its back and the zombie just turned and glared at Harry. Before it could do anything to attack, Buffy grabbed the zombie and tossed him back outside.

"Thanks," Buffy breathed, Harry just nodded. Everyone had been able to get away from the house except for Harry, Joyce and the rest of the Scoobies.

"We need to destroy that mask your mum brought," Harry said, he looked around the room and saw the few zombie which were still standing were being dealt with by Xander and Oz. "Giles said it's got the power of some Nigerian demon,"

Buffy just nodded, she knew better thank to question things like this. "Upstairs," she said before taking off in a jog and sprinting up the stairs with Harry following behind her. Harry followed Buffy down a long corridor and into the last room, they got their just in time to see a zombie with the mask in its hand and was about to put the mask on. Buffy darted forward and tried to rip the mask from its hand. The zombie just pulled it away from her and struck her across her face with it. Buffy went stumbling back but Harry used the distraction to call for his sword and sneak behind the zombie. With one smooth strike, the zombie's head and the mask hit the floor.

"You okay?" Harry asked while putting away his sword. He looked up to see Buffy getting back to her feet with a cut on her forehead. She just nodded and watched as Harry bent down and picked up the mask.

"You're paying for that window by the way," Buffy stated, while dapping her head with her hand, seeing how much blood was there. Harry just laughed but it was short lived as he saw the zombie head still moving.

"You've got to be kidding…" he muttered,

"Destroy the mask then," Buffy ordered, Harry nodded and immediately began to pour pure heat and fire into the mask. Seconds later, it was reduced to dust. Seconds later, the zombie had also disappeared in a cloud of dust, similar to the way vampires had disappeared.

They both stood in silence for a second, revelling in their victory. "Some party, huh." Harry muttered after a minute,

"Meh," Buffy replied, "There all like that for me."

***

Giles turned up ten minutes later, ready to start fighting zombies and was surprised to find out that the fight was already over and that they had one. Harry had spent those ten minutes trying to locate his wand which he had dropped in the fight outside, and when he found it, he walked back into the house to give a hand with the clean up. When he got back inside, instead he found Buffy, Willow and Xander embracing in a hug.

Buffy pulled back from the hug and spoke, "About the whole Angel thing…"

"Don't worry about it," Xander said, "It's time we all moved on,"

Having heard the conversation, Harry walked up to Giles who was watching the conversation from a distance and muttered a question.

"Who's Angel?"

***

**A/N Wow, that turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would be. Anyway, the response to my story so far has been great so keep it going and let me know how I did with this chapter. Remember, reviews do give me the inspiration to write. **


	6. Love, Hope and Koas

**Next chapter is finally finished. I want to thank everybody for their support with there reviews and ask them to keep on coming. Also, a special thank you to Apocalypse Thou for beta reading this chapter. **

**CHAPTER SIX:** _Love, hope and Koas._

"So let me get this straight," Harry said as he tried to understand what was going on. He was in his motel room, where he had spent most of his time since the battle with the zombies. There were several spell books thrown around the room which Harry had been using to try and find out what spell Voldemort had used to send him to this world. Unfortunately, he'd had no luck.

Xander sat on his bed, having come by after school to check on him, as per Giles request. "The vampire slayer fell in love with a vampire?" Harry asked. Xander grinned at Harry's bemused look and just nodded, "That's kind of poetic," Harry commented, seeing the look odd Xander gave him he quickly added, "You know, in a dark and creepy way."

"That's pretty close to what I tried to tell her," Xander agreed.

"But didn't you guys say that all vampires were evil?" Harry asked, "You know, without a soul, demons and all that…"

"Angel was different," Xander explained reluctantly, almost as though he didn't want to admit it. "He was cursed by some gypsies and given back his soul."

"Gypsies?" Harry questioned before shaking his head and continuing, "So what happened to him?"

Xander scratched the back of his head and hesitated before continuing, "The curse had this…clause…in it. It meant that whenever Angel was a hundred percent happy, he would lose his soul again."

Harry exhaled slowly, pulled a chair from the small desk in his room and sat down. "That's depressing."

"Tell me about it," Xander said before carrying on with the story, "So Angel becomes happy with Buffy and loses his soul again, goes back to calling himself Angelus and goes on a killing spree. He and a bunch of other vampires decide they want to resurrect this ancient demon called Acathla, a Big Bad that was basically trying to suck the world into Hell. Angelus succeeded in resurrecting him, but Willow did this spell to restore his soul. Angel got his soul back but it was too late and only his blood could destroy the demon. So…"

"Buffy killed him," Harry finished gravely. His eyes had visibly darkened, as if remembering a horrible memory. He looked up and nodding in understanding. "It had to be done."

Xander just nodded, his throat suddenly feeling very dry, "Yeah," he muttered, "So Buffy decides that she can't handle it, and runs away."

Harry was barely listening to Xander and was staring off into space. "It must be difficult for her," he commented,

"Difficult?" Xander questioned, "No, it was difficult for all of us, we all had to deal with it and Buffy just…she just abandoned us."

Harry shook his head and looked up at Xander. For the first time, Xander saw true sadness and regret in his eyes, "Sometimes it's easier to just run away when things are too terrible to look back."

Xander gave him a curious look; it was obvious to everyone that Harry had a lot of secrets, a lot of history. He was like a big mystery, just waiting to be solved. "You sound like someone who has a history in dealing with this type of thing," he said, "Bad experience?"

Harry just nodded dumbly, "Something like that." Before Harry could continue or Xander could question him further, there was a knock at the door. Glad for the distraction, Harry jumped out of his chair and opened the door to reveal Giles standing there with a book under his arm.

"Harry," Giles nodded, Harry stepped aside to allow Giles into the room. Giles stepped inside and was surprised to see Xander sitting inside as well. "Er, Xander, I thought you would have left by now,"

Xander shrugged, "We were just talking."

Giles nodded before turning back to Harry who he saw was watching him with an expectant look. "Harry, I only came because I wanted a favour,"

Harry chuckled, "I thought you were the one who was supposed to be doing me favours?"

"Yes well…hopefully this will be attractive to you as well," Giles cleared his throat, "For a while now Snyder…the principal of the school…has been asking me to hire an assistant for the library. Of course, I've been holding off on doing so because I couldn't risk the chance of anyone finding out about Buffy or what we do. But now that you're here and you already know everything…"

"Me?" Harry questioned with an incredulous look on his face, "Look Giles, if this is about money, I told you I have…"

"I know you have enough money to take care of yourself," Giles interrupted, "It's just that if you're at the library, we will be able to work together more often on trying to find a way for you to get home. Besides, I need someone I can trust…"

Harry raised an eyebrow, "You trust me?"

"You've given me no reason not to," Giles answered, "Plus, you've risked your life to help us in a battle before."

Harry sighed and hesitated, "Well…I suppose I haven't got anything else to do…"

***

The next morning Harry had gone round to Giles' apartment early, dressed up as smartly as he could. From there, Giles drove him to the school as Harry had to meet Principal Snyder before he could _officially_ begin working at the school. Not that Harry particularly wanted to work at the school as a librarian. The only reason he was doing it was the fact that he would have so many more resources to aid his search to find a way back home. Harry also knew Giles had his own ulterior motives for offering Harry the position. His guess was that Giles was hoping that if he was closer to Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies, he would be able to provide invaluable assistance in a fight.

Harry followed Giles as they walked through the school. As it was still early they were able to make their way to the principal's office without much hassle. Harry was fairly unimpressed by the average looking school, but then again, after spending the last seven years at Hogwarts, he would probably find every school rather boring.

Knocking on the door, Giles waited a few seconds before a voice told them to come in and Harry walked into the office.

"Principal Snyder," Giles said as he stepped into the room. "I wanted to introduce you to my new assistant, Harry Potter."

Harry couldn't help but be unimpressed by the man standing behind the desk. The short, balding man had a scowl on his face and appeared to be glaring at Harry. Despite all this, Harry stepped forward and held out his hand, "Nice to meet you sir."

Snyder just glanced at Harry before turning back to Giles. "He wasn't on the list of recommendations I gave you."

Harry opened his mouth to speak but Giles threw him a warning look before he could say something that could potentially get him into trouble. Giles spoke instead, "As you just said, that list was just recommendations. I thought I would choose someone who I thought was best suited for the role."

Snyder didn't look very happy but seemed to accept the explanation and turned his attention once more to Harry, "He looks very young."

"Old enough to work," Harry stated while trying to resist the urge to curse this man, "_Sir_," he added as an afterthought.

"I am more than satisfied with Harry's credentials to work," Giles said before giving Harry a look which basically told him to shut up.

Snyder sighed but seemed very reluctant to accept Harry. He stood up a little straighter and looked Harry right in his eye and pointed a warning finger at him, "One step out of line and you're gone. You got it?" Harry had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something he or Giles may regret later and simply nodded. Snyder smiled, thinking he had successfully intimidated Harry and turned around before waving the two away. "Get out of my office."

Harry again had to struggle to just nod and walked out of the room, followed by Giles. As soon as they were out of the office and the door was once again closed, Harry groaned and leaned against the wall.

"Remind me why I'm doing this again?" Harry moaned with his eyes closed,

Giles just smiled slightly, "Just remember that I have to put up with this all year around."

Harry just scoffed, "You should try dealing with Snape for seven years."

Giles just gave him a strange look, "Who's Snape?"

Harry waved his hand dismissively, "Just an old teacher of mine." He looked around the school and noticed that a few more students were milling around and giving Harry strange looks. They probably thought he was a new student or something. He saw himself getting some appreciative looks from some of the girls and looks that were probably supposed to be intimidating from some guys. Having stared down the most powerful Dark Lord in centuries and lived to tell the tale, you didn't get intimidated easily. Still, Harry didn't want to become known at a school he didn't even attend. He turned to Giles.

"So, are you going to show me this library or not?" Harry asked. "I mean, it's not that the lockers and pale walls don't have their own charm. They practically scream _fun_," He finished of sarcastically.

Giles just raised an eyebrow, "This is an average school," he said. He began walking down the hallway again which Harry assumed to be a silent way of saying to follow me. "This school and you're school were probably the same."

"Please," Harry scoffed, "My old school was a castle. It had moving staircases and talking paintings. This school can't even compete with it." Harry continued walking as Giles stooped with a shocked expression on his face. Harry just laughed and pointed down the corridor. "This way?" Giles just nodded dumbly and Harry turned on his heel and continued walking down. After a few moments, Giles caught up with Harry and without saying anything, turned a corner and led him up a large staircase.

"Talking paintings?" Giles asked eventually, after reaching the top of the stairs and began walking down a dead ended corridor. The word _Library_ was signposted on the world.

Harry just laughed, "Maybe one day I'll tell you about the time I was almost killed by a

painting,"

Giles just shook his head and pushed open the double doors. They walked into with many books lining the walls. Without looking Harry could tell that they were full with magic. Harry smiled; this was exactly what he needed. Somewhere where he could get intimate knowledge of how this world's magic worked. He would need all the help he could if he was ever going to be able to find his way home.

Harry had been so distracted by the books and the magic in the room that he hadn't even noticed that there was anybody else there. Giles did and seemed concerned with what one of the inhabitants in the room was doing. "Willow!" Giles said loudly, it was only then Harry looked up just in time to see a pencil that was hovering in front of the red headed girl drop to the desk she was sitting at and watched her look up in surprise.

"Giles," She said in shock, "I was just…"

"I know what you were doing Willow," Giles interrupted, "You know I don't want you practicing the Dark Arts alone, you know how _dangerous_ they are," It was only then that Willow wasn't the only one in the room. Buffy, Xander, Cordelia and Oz were also littered around the room, each watching the exchange with interest and a little sympathy for Willow.

"I know but I was being careful," Willow argued, "I did it right as well. I was following the instructions in this book and it only took me a few tries to do it. Besides, I found some other useful spells in this book and…" she trailed off when she realized what she had said and just looked at Giles guiltily.

Giles sighed and rubbed his head, "How may spells have you tried Willow?" Willow didn't answer and instead muttered something incoherent. "Willow?" he said more firmly than he had done before.

"Just a few," Willow answered louder, "It wasn't anything difficult, you know, just little stuff, like making things float and conjuring fire, which I know now not to do on my bed, and I haven't gotten hurt doing anything and…"

Giles just held out a hand, "Please…stop Willow," he said, Willow's mouth gaped open before it shut firmly, Giles remained silent for a second before speaking again, "In future, can you only practice this in my presence?"

Willow knew this was one of the best outcomes the argument could have had and just nodded, "Okay."

"Can I see that?" Harry asked, pointing at the book Willow had been reading. Willow shrugged and just handed it to him. Harry opened the book and began to skim through it, wanting to understand more about the differences in the magic between here and his own world.

"What are you doing here?" he heard Buffy's voice ask him.

"Oh," Harry said, only looking up from the book for a second, "Apparently I work here now."

"You work at a library?" Cordelia questioned, "That's depressing,"

"Um…I hired Harry as my assistant," Giles explained, "I couldn't really hire anyone else as I couldn't risk them finding out about Buffy or what we do."

"Plus it gives me a chance to do some more research on how I can get myself home," Harry commented with his face buried in the book. He paused slightly and looked up, "Tell me something," he said with a curious expression on his face, "Do no students ever come up here to get any books and, oh I don't know, study?"

"This is Sunnydale," Buffy shrugged, "People have more important things to worry about than education."

"And that's the attitude that got Buffy expelled," Xander quipped from the corner of the room.

Buffy glared at him, "They let me back in, didn't they?"

Xander snorted, "Barely,"

Buffy continued to glare at Xander and was about to say something before Giles cleared his throat, "Yes…while were around the subject Buffy. I'm working on a spell to ensure that the demon Acathla can never be resurrected again…"

"A spell?" Willow squeaked. Her face lit up with joy and excitement, "Can I help?"

Giles just glanced at Willow, "It's a very difficult spell…"

"Please?" Willow interrupted, still looking very hopeful.

Giles could only roll his eyes, "Maybe later," he muttered before turning back to Buffy, "It would help me if you could tell me exactly what happened when the portal was opened and you were fighting Angel."

Buffy's eyes widened slightly but other than that she showed no change in her demeanour. "There was a big fight and Angel got the pointy end of the sword," she said flippantly, clearly eager to change the subject.

"A little more detail would be helpful Buffy," Giles pressed.

Buffy sighed before opening her mouth hesitantly. Before any words could come out, a bell rang loudly, telling the students in the library that it was time for the first lessons of the day. "Can't talk now Giles. I've got to go and try to learn something," she said as she grabbed her bag and left the library. She was followed by Xander, Cordelia, Willow and Oz.

Giles sighed and sank into a chair in the library before rubbing his head in thought. Discreetly, Harry watched him from the other side of the library. "There is no spell, is there?" Harry asked after a moment's silence.

Giles looked up, alarmed, before schooling his features and replying, "What makes you say that?"

"Because you were lying," Harry said simply.

"I wasn't…"

"Trust me," Harry interrupted, "I'm really good at spotting lies," Of course, Harry was referring to his Legilimens spell, but he didn't think he needed to tell Giles about that. Besides, it was obvious enough to Harry that Giles was lying without having to use any magic. "You want to get her to talk about Angel," Harry said. It wasn't a question.

Giles looked up sharply before his face fell in realization, "Xander told you." Again, it wasn't a question.

"He told me an extremely shortened version," Harry said flippantly. He watched Giles for another few moments in silence before speaking again, "She doesn't want you to sympathise with her you know," he said quietly, drawing on his own experiences, "She just needs someone to understand,"

"I do understand." Giles argued,

Again, Harry remained silent for a second and just observed Giles before shaking his head. "No… no you don't."

Giles looked up, ready to ask Harry what he had meant by that, ready to ask him what he would have to do to be able to _understand_. What he saw when he looked up he saw that Harry was once again buried in the book. Giles continued to wonder about the mysterious boy and not for the first time, he began to wonder exactly who Harry Potter was.

***

Harry spent most of the day engrossed in the book. He had only been reading the book he had gotten off Willow earlier on in the day. Sure, it probably wasn't the most interesting book in the library and probably didn't contain the most powerful and interesting magic, but Harry found himself interested in the little differences between his world and this one. Who else had this opportunity; to go and learn a wealth of new magic from another world? Harry knew he would have to try and find away to integrate his magic with the magic from this world, if not just to get him home, but because it was likely that nobody else would get this sort of opportunity again. It was only when Harry looked up to see that most of the day had passed him by while he was reading; Harry knew he had to stop. Giles had left a while ago, muttering something about a meeting and Snyder which left Harry in the library alone.

When Harry was bored and had nothing else to do he usually trained. He didn't want to work out as such as all his equipment was back at his hotel room but he resolved to work out a little when he got back later on that night. He definitely didn't want to try magic for two reasons. He didn't want to destroy half the library and his magic was still very volatile. It still wasn't as powerful as he would have liked but it tended to feel better after he let it rest for a while and considering he didn't know the next time he would have to use it, he thought it best to just leave his wand alone. Deciding then that it would be best to just run through some fighting techniques, Harry stood up in the large empty space of the library and closed his eyes.

He had learned that his Occlumency helped when mediating. It helped keep him calm and focused. It relaxed all the muscles in his body and seemed to prepare him for a physical challenge. After a couple of seconds of slow breathing, Harry suddenly thrust his fist out with a punch. Hitting air, Harry spun and began a rhythm that one of his martial arts teachers had taught him. It was supposed to hone your technique until it was practically flawless. Then, you were supposed to do it faster. You were supposed to go as fast as possible, keeping you're technique perfect. Of course, it was impossible to master it. The whole point of it was to prove that you can always push yourself to go harder, to go faster, that you can always be better. Harry cleared these thoughts from his mind and focused on the technique.

"You need to tuck in your arm a little more," a voice said. Harry stopped in mid-punch to see Buffy watching him with a bottle of water in her hands, "Don't let me stop you." She waved him on as she took a sip of her water.

Harry didn't know how long he had been doing it for and suddenly found himself sweaty and more importantly, thirsty.

"Water?" he croaked slightly, while holding his hand out with a pleading look on his face. Buffy rolled her eyes and tossed him the bottle she was holding. He caught it easily and took a few large gulps. "Thanks," he said, putting the cap on the water and throwing it back to her.

"Well if I knew you got tired that easily I would have brought a fountain," Buffy commented.

Harry grinned; "If you think you can do better…" he stepped aside as if making room for her to try. "But then again if you can't even beat me in a fight then how…"

"You think you can take me?" Buffy interrupted, with a disbelieving look on her face.

Harry smirked, "Well if I remember correctly, last time we were fighting vampires you were the one playing the damsel in distress."

"I was not…" Buffy stammered, "I didn't need your help,"

"Prove it," Harry challenged while dropping into a fighting stance, challenging her to fight him.

Buffy glared at him for a second and looked like she was going to fight him before shaking her head and stepped back, "I don't need to prove myself to you," she answered but took a second to grin at Harry's disappointed and confused look, "Besides, I've had a long day and…"

"You've had a long day?" Harry repeated, "Is that what you say to all the vampires that attack after your bed time? I think it's time the Slayer put away the dangerous stakes and go back to the teddy bears and pink Barbie dolls." Harry mocked.

Buffy glared at him, indecision evident on her face, before she eventually decided and pulled of her jacket. "Fine," she muttered, "But don't blame me when you get your ass kicked."

"Believe me when I say that that's not going to happen," Harry replied with a cocky grin on his face. He fell back into his fighting stance and waited for Buffy to approach him. "Hurry up Slayer; I know you're scared but…"

"You talk too much," Buffy commented, "You know that, right?" Buffy didn't wait for an answer and instead darted toward Harry faster than anyone would have expected and swung a punch for his head. Luckily, Harry was no slowcoach either and was able to get an arm up in time to block it. Buffy surprised Harry though by bringing her knee up and kneeing him in the stomach. She then swung her leg around swept away Harry's standing leg, dropping him back first to the floor.

Buffy just smirked down at him, "Is that it?"

Harry glared back up at her and brought his knees up to his chest and kicked himself back up. Harry found himself having to bend over backwards to avoid another punch from Buffy, but was able to grab hold of her attack arm and flip her over. Buffy was able to land on her feet and tried to turn around to attack Harry only to find a blade lying on her shoulder.

"Not fair," Buffy muttered, suddenly feeling very tense, "Fight me without the weapons,"

Harry shrugged, "Fine," he said, throwing the sword across the room before stepping backwards and once again falling into a fighting position.

Buffy, however, was not ready to start fighting yet, "Wand." She stated.

Harry rolled his eyes and took his wand out of his pocket and threw it across the room as well. "There," he said, "Are you going to stop acting like a baby now and fight me."

Buffy didn't answer and instead leapt into the air and attacking Harry with a flying kick. Harry quickly put his hands up to defend himself and quickly had to lift up his shin to block a low kick. Harry suddenly darted forward and began to swing for Buffy's head, forcing her to duck. Buffy smiled a little; at least he wasn't going to go easy on her so he wouldn't hurt her, not that he could.

***

"Alright, you win," Harry yielded over an hour later. They both were out of breath as they had been fighting nonstop. They found themselves to be pretty much even in speed and strength, but Buffy had the most experience in hand to hand combat and because of this, Harry spent most of the time defending himself and only attacking every now and again. In the end Buffy had caught Harry with a right hand which sent him sprawling to the floor as she put her knee into his stomach and pinned him to the ground. Buffy made a noise of relief and just rolled over so she was lying next to Harry. "I admit it; you're not as bad as I thought,"

Buffy grinned, "You're not so terrible yourself," she said as she groaned and sat up. She walked back over to the discarded water from earlier and drank almost half the bottle; she hesitated before offering the rest to Harry.

"I'm good," Harry said as he groaned and got back to his feet. Buffy shrugged and went back to drinking. Harry watched her from across the room, thinking about what Xander had told him earlier. She had lost someone she loved, just like Harry had…well…just like Harry had lost people he had loved. He understood what it was like to have the entire world resting on your shoulders because of a prophecy. He knew what it felt like to have his life controlled by some higher force, to be born to fight a war. They were the same. They were both chosen ones, of different worlds they were both chosen by fate to fight. This made Harry feel compelled to help her, to let her know that he understood what she had to go through in day to day life. Harry knew what it would have meant to him to have someone else that was practically born to fight to talk to during his battles with Voldemort, even though he didn't want to talk about his past, it was these thoughts which prompted him to say what he said next. Harry cleared his throat slightly before he spoke again, "You know, I had a friend…"

"Fascinating…" Buffy said dryly.

"Let me finish," Harry replied with a pointed look, "I had a friend; her name was Hermione, Hermione Granger. She was brilliant, clever, pretty. She saved my life more times than I can count. She was always pushing me to be better, pushing me to be the man I needed to be."

Buffy noticed Harry's serious tone and did not miss the use of the words _was_ and _had_. "What happened to her?" she asked quietly.

Harry was silent for a moment. His throat went dry and raspy. It was like the words didn't want to come out, but he knew they had to. "The man I was fighting…Voldemort…his name was Voldemort. He wanted to become immortal so he created these…objects. It meant that he transferred part of his soul into these objects so if he ever died, he could resurrect himself." Harry explained, "So me and my headmaster…a mentor of mine…found out about them and we hunted them down to destroy them, but before we could find them all Voldemort found out that _we_ knew about them and that we were trying to destroy them." Harry paused; he was coming up to the more difficult part of the story. He took a deep breath, and forced himself to continue, "He attacked…he attacked a village where most of the students at my school attended…and he captured her….but instead of killing her…he…he…he used her to make another horcrux."

Buffy had been listening intently, to say the least. She could see the sadness and regret literally swimming in his eyes, but she said nothing and allowed him to continue. This seemed to be difficult enough for him to say anyway.

"We didn't notice at first," Harry continued after taking a moment to strengthen his resolve, "But over a few months she began to change. Slowly she became colder and crueler. The horcrux possessed her, it was changing her into a completely different person…and then she began to attack…" Harry paused again, a single tear fell from his cheek, "It took awhile, but I found out it was her and I figured out what Voldemort had done…in the end, we fought…and I beat her, barely…and I told her that I was sorry…I told her that I loved her…and I killed her."

Silence echoed through the room and from across the room Buffy could see another tear slide down his face. Slowly, she walked across the room and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder; Harry stood up straight and brushed her hand off before wiping the tears away. "Do you see Buffy, even if there was a chance for her to fight off the horcrux and go back to the person she was before, she was still a horcrux. I had to do it, I had to…kill…her, if I didn't Voldemort would never have stopped killing innocent people."

Buffy simply nodded and stared into space. "Giles told you about Angel." It wasn't a question. She didn't sound angry, or upset, just content and accepting.

"It was Xander," Harry corrected idly. He turned and touched her shoulder, "You did what you had to do." He said firmly, and Buffy nodded, for the first time she truly believed it.

"What's going on?" a new voice said, both Harry and Buffy looked up to see Giles walking through the library door with a book under his arm and a curious expression on his face.

"Nothing," Buffy answered before Harry could speak, "We were just talking."

Giles looked suspicious but just nodded, "It's good to see you getting along," he commented as he put his books down on the large table.

"I'm going to go," Harry announced, "I'll see you tomorrow,"

Giles nodded, "Okay then Harry,"

"Bye," Buffy said, giving him a slight smile. Harry turned and walked out the library, just before the door closed behind him, he heard Buffy speak to Giles. "So, about this spell, what exactly did you need to know about the fight between Angel and I?"

***

Harry didn't realise that it had turned dark. But as he began the walk home on a deserted side road he found his mind wandering to his fight with Buffy. He enjoyed sparring with her. She was good, no, she was better than anyone he had ever fought with before. Harry loved a challenge, and he had found a new one; he had to find a way to beat her.

"Harry Potter." A voice in the wind said. Harry froze; he hadn't heard anyone approaching him. He fingered the end of his wand as he turned around. Standing about five feet away from him was a man. His wore a long black cloak with black trousers and black shoes. He had long black hair, blowing across his face. Across his back were two swords. Across his face was a curved scar which ran from the corner of his eye down to the corner of his lips. The man had a powerful presence, and whoever he was, it wasn't someone for Harry to take lightly.

"You don't look like a vampire," Harry commented idly, "Then again I don't know of any vampire that knows my name."

The man smiled grimly, "They don't, not yet anyway."

"Well it's not fair that you know my name and I don't know yours," Harry said carefully, "Who are you?"

"My name's Koas." The man said simply.

"Koas?" Harry chuckled slightly, "That's a stupid name,"

The man, named Koas, laughed loudly, "Some would say that Harry is a stupid name,"

"Oh," Harry said, "And how do you know about my stupid name?"

Koas stared at him for a second, before deciding not to answer the question, "I have an offer for you Harry,"

"Oh, really, well that's good because I've got an offer for you too," Harry replied, "You turn around and walk away and I won't kill you."

"You shouldn't make threats that you can't back up," Koas warned.

"Believe me," Harry said in a serious voice, his eyes narrowed and he looked as if he was ready to attack at any second, "I can back it up."

Koas glared at Harry, all the humour he found in the situation had apparently gone, "You are arrogant Potter," he said harshly, "If you were to follow the right orders, make the right decisions, I could get you home."

Harry blinked once, then he blinked twice. _I could get you home. _He knew he wasn't from this world. This man, Koas, seemed to know a lot about him, yet he knew nothing about who he was. Who the hell was he? Harry covered up his anger and surprise and instead summoned his large golden sword to his hand.

He swished it around a couple of times in a threatening manner, "Do I look like a _taking orders_ kind of guy."

The man glared at Harry and reached upwards, fingering the handle of his sword slightly. Harry raised the sword, ready to defend himself at a moment's notice. Koas seemed to change his mind though and dropped his hand back down to his side and laughed, loudly, "Harry, Harry, Harry, we could do great things if we worked together." Koas said, "We will meet again, and next time I promise you, I'll be a lot more…_persuasive_."

Harry narrowed his eyes and held the sword out in front of him. "What does that mean?"

"Spoilers, Harry," Koas laughed, "Spoilers," And in a blink of an eye, Koas was gone, leaving Harry standing alone in the street, with one question going through his mind.

"What the hell just happened?"

***

**Another chapter down and more to come soon. Tell me what you think everybody! Until next time!**


	7. Coincidences

**A/N Thank you Apocalypse Thou for Beta-reading this chapter.**

**CHAPTER 7: Coincidences**

The next day, the Scoobies were back in the library before school started. Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles were all scattered around the large library. Buffy was the only one with a book in front of her as Giles had decided to use the rare free moment to continue with Buffy's Slayer training. After studying for about half an hour, Buffy's frustration grew until she finally slammed the book she was reading shut and dropped it on the table.

"Seriously Giles, can we stop now?" Buffy pleaded, "I still have to revise for a chemistry make up test later on today plus I have to go patrolling and…"

"Alright," Giles conceded, "Just promise me you will study the different types of demons."

"You know that all work and no play makes a slayer very unhappy," Buffy said as she pushed the book she had previously been reading away from her and put her feet up on the table.

Giles sighed, "You have to keep on top of this Buffy. You never know what you're going to face out there and…"

"I know, I know, I never know what dangerous situation I'm going to find myself in so I have to be prepared," Buffy said with a serious look on her face. Giles stared at her for a second until he seemed to be satisfied by her response and nodded before looking back at the book he was reading. Buffy turned to Xander and Willow who were sitting across the table from her, "So what are you guys doing tonight?"

"We were going to go to the Bronze," Willow answered, she glanced at Xander for a second before continuing, "You know, with Oz and Cordelia…"

"All coupled up huh?" Buffy asked,

Xander nodded, "You can tag along if you wanted."

Buffy shrugged, not giving a definite answer, Willow didn't accept this and spoke up, "You know I heard that Scott Hope might be stopping by."

Buffy shrugged for the second time in a row, "So…"

"He likes you, you know," Willow continued, "But you weren't ready for dating last year, you know with the whole Angel thing, of course he didn't know that but he's liked you since then." Willow said quickly. It was easy enough for the other three to follow her as they were used to their friends rambling.

"What Willow is trying to say," Xander interrupted, "Is that Scott has this major crush on you." Buffy nodded calmly although her cheeks went slightly red. She liked Scott, she really did, but could she handle another relationship so soon after Angel…

Before any answer could be given, the door opened again and Harry walked through. He wasn't smiling or even looking at the rest of them, instead he seemed to have a conflicted, angry look on his face. "Hey…Harry?" Buffy said slowly.

Harry looked up and noticed the others in the room and gave a small smile, "Hey," he muttered back. Without making any further attempt at conversation, Harry crossed the library and walked to the bookshelves. In silence, he began scanning the spines of the books, looking for a title that would help him out.

Giles, Buffy, Willow and Xander just remained in silence for a second, just watching Harry as he continued to scan the books. "Are you looking for something Harry?" Giles asked eventually.

"A book…"

"Well you're looking in the right place," Xander quipped.

Harry continued, ignoring Xander's comment, "A book on well known and powerful vampires or demons," he stopped in his search and turned to Giles, "Any suggestions?"

"Umm…yes…maybe, hang on," Giles said as he walked up the few steps in the library and strode into his office at the back. The group remained in silence for a few moments while waiting for Giles to come back. Harry had returned to looking at the many books in the bookshelf, a lot of the books interested him and in other circumstances he would have loved to take a look at them, but he had more pressing matters at hand. Giles walked back in a couple of seconds later with three books underneath his arm. "It would be helpful if you gave us more information on what exactly you are looking for."

Harry sighed, "Anything that would tell me about any powerful vampires or…"

"Or demons, yeah we got that part," Buffy interrupted, "What I want to know is why you want a book on vampires and demons?"

Harry rolled his eyes. He really didn't want to talk about it, plus, it wasn't really any of their business. Koas had come to him, not the slayer. "I just do."

Giles walked back down the stairs with a grave look in his eye. He put the books down and stared at Harry. "Harry, if something's happened; if something powerful has come to Sunnydale then we are the people that you need to tell."

Harry hesitated. Should he tell them about his encounter with Koas last night? Giles was right about one thing; if he was going to tell anyone, the Slayer and her watcher seemed to be the ideal choices. Then again, Koas seemed to be after him, not the Slayer. He went out of his way to talk to Harry, he didn't even attack him. Koas had a powerful aura around him, it made Harry wary. Similar to when he first met Buffy and he could just tell she was powerful and not someone that you wanted to mess with, Koas gave Harry that same feeling. Harry sighed, he wasn't sure whether or not it was the right thing to do, but it didn't look like he was going to be getting any help without telling them what had happened.

"Have any of you ever heard of anything or anyone named Koas?" He asked after a moment of thought.

Xander snorted, "Koas?"

"I don't believe I have," Giles said, ignoring Xander's comment, "Why?"

"Someone…something…appeared to me last night, he called himself Koas." Harry explained.

"Demon?" Buffy asked, she was listening intently now, her curiosity was definitely peaked.

Harry shrugged, "Who knows?" he said, "But that's not been bothering me. I think…I think that he knows who I am."

Giles took of her glasses and rubbed his eyes, "He knows who you are?"

"You mean he knows that you're from another world?" Buffy asked,

"I think so," Harry nodded, "He said that if I take the _right orders_ from the _right people_, he could get me home."

Harry just watched Buffy and Giles share a glance and a shrug each, telling him that neither of them had ever heard of any demon named Koas. "Maybe he came from you're world," Buffy suggested.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Well," Buffy said, "It sounds like a big coincidence that you arrived here from another world a couple of weeks ago and then this demon or vampire or…whatever…shows up and knows who you are."

Harry thought about it for a second, before shaking his head. "Nah, he can't have. First of all, no one else was around when Voldemort and I were fighting and if he came from my world, chances are that he would have wanted me dead."

"He didn't want you dead last night?" Willow questioned.

"I don't think so," Harry said before sighing, "He could have killed me if he wanted too. I didn't even notice him walking behind me until he said something. No, he doesn't want me dead right now. He needs me for something."

Giles looked sympathetically at Harry for another second before pushing the books he had brought with him over to Harry. "I don't think you'll find anything in there but you're welcome to have a look."

"You could ask the Watchers Council," Buffy suddenly suggested to Giles, "They might know something about this mysterious Koas guy."

"That wouldn't be a good idea," Giles said, "If I were to do that it would mean bringing up Harry's origins and that would not end up well."

"Don't worry about it," Harry said, "If I can't find anything in here, it's not the end of the world. If Koas does need something from me then he's going to come back and speak to me eventually; it's just a matter of time."

The group sat in silence for a moment until Buffy smiled and changed the subject completely, "Harry," she said brightly, "You're coming to the Bronze with us tonight." She finished in a tone of voice that told Harry that she wasn't asking.

Harry raised an eyebrow, "What's the Bronze?"

"A nightclub," Buffy answered, Harry opened his mouth to protest but before he could, Buffy held out a hand to stop him and continued, "You have to come because Xander and Willow are going to be all coupled up and someone has to keep me company." Buffy paused for a second, "Plus, you really need to get out a little bit more. You've been here a week and you still haven't done anything that's considered to be remotely fun."

Realising this was going to be an argument Harry just wouldn't win, he held his hands up and rolled his eyes, "Fine." Just as he said this, the bell rang meaning lessons for the day was starting.

"Good," Buffy said as she stood up and threw her bag over her shoulder, "Come on guys, don't want to be late."

***

That night, as promised, Harry turned up at the Bronze with Buffy, Xander, Willow, Cordelia and Oz. Harry found himself feeling a little bit out of place. The club was dark and a band was playing on the small stage in the corner. People were dancing on the dance floor and Harry found himself having to talk loudly to be heard. Having never been in this sort of situation before, Harry found himself just wanting to sit in the corner and sip his drink. He snorted at this thought. What sort of life did he lead if as a seventeen year old, he felt more comfortable on a battlefield then in a nightclub? Buffy had dragged him up out of the seats were he had been previously sitting, along with Willow and Oz and other to the bar to get some more drinks. They had lost track of Xander and Cordelia awhile ago, assuming they had gone off to dance or make out or something.

At the bar the music wasn't as loud as it was one the dance floor. In fact, it was quiet enough for Harry to actually be able to hear Buffy thank the bartender for getting them the drinks before handing two cups to Harry and holding onto the other two herself. Harry was noticing that Buffy seemed happier than she had been in the morning. It's not that she wasn't happy this morning, but this time, the smile she wore seemed to be more natural, more genuine.

"What's got you in such a good mood?" Harry asked after a few more seconds of just watching her.

Buffy faced him, a cup in both hands and continued to smile, "Why wouldn't I be happy? I passed my Chemistry make up test, hanging out with my friends…"

"Friends?" Harry interrupted with an eyebrow raised.

Buffy gave him a weird look, "Well you're not an enemy, are you?" Harry was smiling slightly to himself. It wasn't often that he made friends. Sure, he had plenty of acquaintances, but with the life he led he didn't have time to make friends. To have someone that he barely knew to call him a friend, it made him happier than it would make other people. Without another word, Buffy turned and walked back toward Willow and Oz, who were currently engaging in a rather passionate kiss. Harry considered lingering for a couple of seconds, letting the couple finish, but Buffy didn't bother to wait and just walked up to them. "Sorry to interrupt,"

Harry watched from a distance as Willow and Oz broke apart, "But yet you still do," Harry commented as he took his seat and handed a cup to Willow. Buffy threw Harry a look which told him to _shut_ _up_ before handing Oz his own cup.

Willow nudged Oz in the ribs and pointed at Buffy, "Is it just me or does she look all…glowing?"

After glancing at Buffy Oz nodded, "I suspect happiness."

Before Buffy could say anything else, Willow eyes widened slightly and she sat up a little straighter. "Hi, Scott, what are you doing here?"

Harry turned around to see another boy behind them. He glanced at them all, but his eyes lingered on Buffy. "You told me if I came after eight I could run into Buffy." Buffy's eyes widened and she threw a dirty look. Willow grinned sheepishly and took a long sip out of the cup she was holding and began to look at the ground. Harry, not having a clue who this guy was, decided to just sit down and not say anything. "Sorry, I'm not a good liar," he apologised, "It's not good for the soul…or the skin actually…it makes me blotch…"

Buffy smiled nervously, "Hey Scott,"

Silence, an awkward, stretching silence reigned for a second before the boy, apparently named Scott, spoke again, "Don't you love this song?"

"Yeah," Buffy said slowly, "Actually I do."

"Well would you like too…"

"Dance?" Buffy finished, she began to look nervous again. She glanced in Willow's direction and saw her grinning at her, trying to convince her to go. Buffy was far from convinced though, "I don't know…I have bad…well…thank you for asking but…" Buffy stammered until Scott stopped her.

"You know what, I'm just going to stand over there," Scott said, "If you want to dance…then mosey on over, if not, you don't mosey." He finished with what Harry thought was supposed to be a charming smile, "No harm no foul, right?"

Buffy nodded, "Right." With one last smile, Scott left and walked over to the dance floor. As soon as he was gone, Buffy threw her head back and breathed a sigh of relief.

"I don't often ask girls to dance," Harry commented after a few moments silence, "But when I have, it's never been as awkward as that." For the second time in minutes, Buffy just gave him a look which said _shut_ _up_. Shrugging, Harry went back to sipping his drink.

"Come on Buffy," Willow urged, "He has charm," she said, "And he's normal, and that's what you said you wanted to get back to."

Oz looked thoughtful for a second, "Plus bonus points for using the word mosey," he added unhelpfully.

Buffy looked down at her cup and took a deep breath, "I just don't think I'm ready." Back on the whole Angel subject, Harry decided it was best not to say anything. Even though he had gone through a very similar experience to her, he thought that she had to move past it. She was the Slayer after all; she had a job to do.

That thought triggered something else in his mind; the thought that he and Buffy had a similar experience. It was too similar. What were the chances of getting thrown into a parallel world? What were the chances of landing in the same town where the Slayer lives? A Slayer with a similar past and a similar destiny to his own. A big coincidence? Harry doubted it.

Remembering he was supposed to be here to have fun and not brood, he took a large sip of his drink and looked up to see Xander and Cordelia sitting back down with them. Harry wasn't sure he even wanted to know what those two had been off doing. "Check out Slutarama and her disco date," Cordelia said as she sat down, nodding toward a couple who where dancing. "What was the last thing that guy danced to? KC and the Sunshine band?"

Harry watched along with the rest of the group the two dancing like idiots. At first, Harry was just watching in amused but as he continued to look at them, he noticed that the man's features seemed sharper than normal. Harry was sure he saw a glint of yellow in his eyes and he found it weird how he was avoiding the sunlight while dancing. He suddenly wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her out of the club. "Is it just me or…"

"Does it look like that guy doesn't thrive on sunlight?" Buffy finished, proving that his suspicions were not completely unfounded. Buffy caught the look Harry was giving her and nodded, "Come on," she said, standing up and following the couple out of the nightclub. Harry stood up and followed. Xander, Oz and Willow all gladly followed but Xander had to walk back and literally drag Cordelia out of the chair. Harry had to stop himself from walking into the back of Buffy who had stopped suddenly as she came face to face with Scott, who obviously thought that she was here to dance with him.

"Hey," he said, with a big grin on his face.

"Oh," Buffy said as her face dropped, "Err…no…it's just…I have too…"

Scott stepped backwards and nodded in understanding, "You're not here to dance."

Buffy nodded, "I can't…I just…"

"Umm Buffy…" Harry interrupted, "Weren't we in the middle of doing something?"

Buffy glanced backwards and nodded at Harry. She turned back to Scott and threw him an apologetic look, "Sorry, I have to go." Buffy pushed past Scott and walked outside the nightclub, Harry and the rest of her friends followed behind. Once outside, Buffy spun around, not seeing any sign of the two. She reached behind her back and pulled out a wooden stake, leaving Harry to wonder whether she carried one of those wherever she went. "Where did they go?" Buffy questioned,

"Why are we out here anyway?" Cordelia questioned, completely ignoring Buffy's question. "They're probably just making out anyway."

Just then, they heard a thud, as if a body was just thrown against a wall. "That doesn't sound like making out," Willow commented. Buffy held the stake forward and charged toward the sound. Harry decided that with his magic acting the way it was, Harry instead summoned a small fireball in his hand and wasn't far behind her. "Unless I've been doing it wrong," Willow added before she ran forward to follow the rest of their friends.

Turning a corner, Harry finally caught sight of the couple. The man had the girl pushed up against the wall and his mouth was inching nearer and nearer to her neck. Harry raised his wand, ready to attack, but moments before he did, the girl grabbed the man by the neck and threw him into the wall. He watched as the girl reached back and punched the vampire firmly, decking him. The girl dusted off her hands and turned toward them.

"Don't worry, I got it," she said with confidence in her voice. Harry lowered his wand but did not put it away. Out of the corner of his eye, he also saw Buffy lower her stake. "I'm Faith," she said, "You must be Buffy."

Before Buffy could say anything else, the vampire jumped back up to its feet and grabbed Faith from behind. Faith reacted quickly and elbowed the vampire in its stomach before leaning backwards and head butting the vampire, causing it to fall backwards.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there is a new Slayer in town," Oz commented. Another Slayer? How the hell did that happen?

Faith turned around and kicked the vampire in the head once more, causing it to fall against the wall. She glanced at Buffy and more importantly, the stake she was holding. "Can I borrow that?" Without waiting for an answer, she reached forward and grabbed the stake out of Buffy's hand. The vampire charged at her again but Faith sidestepped it and threw the vamp into the wall. Holding it up, Faith used her free hand to twirl the stake around before driving it into its heart. Harry saw the vampires eyes widen for a split second before it crumbled to dust. Walking back to the group, Faith handed Buffy back her stake, "Thanks B," she said, "Couldn't have done it without you."

***

The group had gone back inside the club and had retaken their seats. This time, Faith was with them and telling stories about her past experiences with vampires. Harry was barely listening; he noticed that Buffy had a strange look on her face, almost as if it was a look of jealousy and envy. He couldn't understand why. If someone else turned up that could share his destiny with him, Harry would have been ecstatic.

"So it's like the hottest summer…in forever," Faith explained, "So it must have been like 180 degrees and I'm sleeping without a stitch on. All of a sudden I hear this screaming from outside so I go tearing out, stark nude, and this church bus had broken down and I see three vamps just…feasting…on half the Baptists in south Boston. So I waste the vamps and this preacher comes up and he's hugging me like there's no tomorrow when all of a sudden the cops pull up, and they arrested us both."

"Wow," Xander said with an amazed look on his face. He was obviously thinking of the part of the story which had him picturing Faith naked, "They should film that story and show it every Christmas." Over than a stern glare from Cordelia, everyone seemed to just ignore Xander's comment.

"I could eat a horse," Faith muttered, "Isn't it funny how slaying always makes you hungry and horny?"

All eyebrows raised and all pairs of eyes turned toward Buffy with a questioning look. Squirming under the looks of her friends, Buffy shrugged, "Well…sometimes I crave a low fat yogurt afterwards."

"I get it!" Cordelia exclaimed suddenly. Everybody turned to her with a confused look on their faces, "Not the horny thing…yuck," she assured, "The two slayer thing. Buffy died for like two minutes and Kendra was called, Kendra died and then Faith was called."

Everybody seemed to nod in understanding except for Harry, who was now utterly lost. "You…died…"

Buffy nodded, "Uh huh,"

Still lost, Harry continued to speak, "Died as in, stopped breathing, heart stopped beating, dead?"

"Yeah," Buffy nodded again, "It's a long story." She added while giving Harry look which told him she would explain it to him later. Knowing that nothing else was going to be said about it, Harry just nodded and leaned back in his seat, the confused expression still evident on his face.

"But why were you called here?" Willow asked.

"Oh, I wasn't," Faith answered, "My watcher skipped off to some retreat thing in England so I skipped out. Figured this was my chance to meet the infamous Buff and compare notes," Faith finished, Buffy smiled a little. "So, B, did you really use a rocket launcher one time?"

Buffy nodded and leaned forward, "Yeah, it's a funny story actually…"

"So what was the story about that alligator?" Xander interrupted, "You said something…before…"

"Oh…there's this big daddy vampire out in Missouri that used to keep them as pets," Faith explained, "So he's got me wrestling one of them and it must have been twelve feet long…"

"Was this…umm…" Xander interrupted again, "Also naked?"

"Well," Faith said slowly and she grinned slyly, "The alligator was."

"Xander," Cordelia warned, "Find a new thing."

"I'll tell ya," Faith continued just as Harry was taking another sip of his drink, "I've never had more trouble than that vampire." The last comment caused Harry to snort slightly into his drink, causing everyone to turn to him. "What? You think you could have done better?" Faith questioned.

Harry hesitated slightly before grinning, "Please," he said, "I killed a seventy foot snake single handedly when I was twelve."

"Really?" Buffy asked, the look on her face told him that she was impressed, "Single handedly?"

"Well…" Harry said, "I had a bit of help from a bird."

"A bird?" Xander questioned.

Harry shrugged, "It was a special bird."

After taking another sip of her drink, Faith gave Harry a strange look, "So what does that make you?"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked,

"Well," Faith explained, "I don't know of many humans that fight seven foot snakes."

Harry took another sip of his drink while he thought of how to answer. He wasn't going to tell her the truth that was for sure. Until he found out exactly how much Koas knew about him, he wasn't planning on saying anything to anybody else. This time, it was Harry's turn to give Buffy a look which said _shut up_, as she opened her mouth to say something, instead Harry swirled the drink in his hand and answered vaguely, "Just a person who enjoys a good adventure."

"A thought," Oz said, speaking up for the first time in a while, "You all kill vampires…and snakes…apparently…but I'm wondering on your position on werewolves?" Harry frowned slightly; Oz was implying that he was a werewolf. Not that Harry had a problem with that; he was more bothered about the fact that he couldn't tell he was a werewolf.

Willow put her hand on his shoulder and confirmed Harry's thoughts. "Oz is a werewolf."

"It's kind of a long story," Buffy said,

Oz shrugged, "I got bit,"

"Apparently not that long." Buffy amended,

"As long as you don't go scratching me or humping my leg," Faith warned, "Were five by five, you know."

Willow nodded, happy with her answer, before turning to Harry. "Harry?" she asked, wanting to know if the fact that her boyfriend was a werewolf bothered him.

"Hey," Harry replied, "Just keep to yourself on a full moon and we haven't got a problem." Oz nodded, he seemed to be happy with Harry's answer and went back to his drink, Willow threw Harry a grateful smile before going back to her drink as well. "Anyway, it's late, I better be going,"

Faith smirked, "Parent's got you on a curfew?"

Harry stiffened visibly at the mention of his parents, but tried his best not to let it affect him. "No," Harry muttered with a dark look on his face. Before anyone else could question him, "Anyway, I'll see you later," Harry said as he left the group and headed back to the motel.

***

The next day Harry was once again in the library of the school. Buffy must have had a free period as she was there as well, recapping the events of the previous nights patrol to Giles. Apparently, after he left Buffy had gone patrolling with Faith and ran into a couple of vampires in one of Sunnydale's many graveyards.

"So there was no trouble other than that?" Giles asked. He was standing up in the library with a book open in front of him. Buffy had sat down on the table next to where Harry was working

"No," Buffy assured, she sat in silence for a second, "Oh, no, wait, there was something else."

"What?"

"One of the vampires," Buffy said, "He mentioned something about living for kissing toast."

"Toast?" Giles questioned,

Buffy nodded, "Yeah, he said, I live for kissing toast."

"In my world vampires seemed to be obsessed blood," Harry commented, "But toast works too."

"Are you sure he said toast?" Giles questioned, he knew that remembering names wasn't one of Buffy's strong points. "And not something that sounds like toast?" Buffy shrugged, showing that either she didn't know or didn't care, most likely both. Giles rubbed his chin in thought, trying to think of something logical the vampire might have said. "By any chance did he say Kakistos?"

Buffy's face brightened suddenly, "Yeah that was it." Her face suddenly turned to a frown, "What's a Kakistos?"

"The worst of the worst," Harry said suddenly without taking his eyes of the book he was reading.

Buffy scrunched up her face in confusion, "What?"

Harry looked up, "The worst of the worst," Harry repeated, "It's what Kakistos means in Ancient Greek."

Buffy raised an eyebrow, "You speak Ancient Greek?"

Harry grinned, "I can also speak to snakes."

"Really?" Buffy asked, Harry just nodded, "That's quite cool, being able to speak to animals."

"Trust me," Harry said, "It's more trouble than it's worth."

"Anyway," Giles said loudly, trying to take the topic of conversation of Harry's relationship with snakes, "Kakistos does mean the worst of the worst in Ancient Greek, but it is also the name of a vampire so old that his hands have become cloven hooves."

"Hmm," Harry muttered to himself while closing the book he had given up on trying to read.

"What?" Buffy asked.

"Remember what you said to me yesterday?" Harry asked back,

Buffy thought for a second, "That you need to get out more?"

Harry rolled his eyes, "No, not that," he assured, "You said that it was a big coincidence that me and Koas showed up round about the same time and that he knows who I am."

Buffy nodded, but didn't get the point of what he was trying to say. "So…" she trailed off, waiting for him to continue.

Harry sighed, realizing that he would have to spell it out for her. "A second Slayer turns up in Sunnydale the same time that this ancient powerful vampire shows up," he said, "Coincidence?"

"Oh…" Buffy said, finally getting Harry's point, "I should go and ask Faith whether the name kissing toast…"

"Kakistos." Giles corrected,

"Yeah…whatever…" Buffy said flippantly, "I should ask her whether that name means anything to her."

Harry nodded, "That would be a good idea."

Buffy nodded and smiled before jumping off the table and heading toward the door. She paused suddenly and turned back to Harry, "So is it just snakes you can talk too or all animals?"

"Well…" Harry thought, "I did used to talk to my owl." He said, "But she didn't speak back to me." Buffy smiled once more before she left the library.

***

The next two days past without much incident for Harry. Of course, the same couldn't be said about Buffy and Faith. Just as Harry had predicted, the vampire Kakistos came to Sunnydale to get revenge on Faith who had lost his eye due to a previous fight with the Slayer. That night Kakistos and a couple of other vampires cornered Faith and Buffy. The two Vampire Slayers found themselves having to fight their way out and eventually. Together they were able to stake and kill Kakistos.

Buffy had begun dating Scott. Even though Harry thought the boy seemed to be…for lack of a better word, desperate, Buffy seemed to be happy with him. Harry had divided his attention into researching a way for him to get home and trying to find any information on this Koas character. Unfortunately, he couldn't find anything; it was like he didn't exist. It was the night before the full moon and Harry had intended to brew Wolfsbane potion for Oz, but discovering that he didn't have the ingredients, there wasn't much he could do about it.

He walked into the library the next day, a little later than he usually got there, to find Giles, Willow, Xander and Oz in the library with the grave looks on their faces. Not bothering with any sort of greeting, Harry just cut straight to the point. "What's wrong?"

Giles sighed and took of his glasses before using his jumper to clean his glasses, "There was a murder last night." Harry paused and waited for Giles to continue, knowing there was something else. "We think it could have been Oz," Giles finished eventually.

Harry's entire facial features sunk. One glance at Oz told him that he was devastated. His head was resting on Willow's shoulder as the red head tried her best to comfort him. "I thought Xander was going to watch him?" he questioned, as he remembered Xander staying late in the library last night.

"I…err…I…umm…fell asleep…" Xander stammered with a guilty look plastered across his face. Harry couldn't help but feel slightly guilty as well. If Harry would have gone out of his way to try and find the ingredients for the Wolfsbane potion, this wouldn't have happened.

"Are you sure it was Oz?" Harry asked, pushing all his guilt aside, "It defiantly wasn't anyone or anything else?"

"We're not sure, but whatever did this, it wasn't human, the attack was animalistic," Giles explained, "But I'm sending Buffy out on patrol tonight in the area the body was found, if it wasn't Oz then the creature may still be around."

Harry nodded, "I'll go with her." He held his hand out before Giles could argue, "Yes, I know that Buffy can handle herself but two pairs of hands are better than one, right?" Giles sighed and nodded.

***

"I don't understand you," Buffy said later on that night. As Harry had promised, he had gone patrolling with Buffy in the hope of finding a creature capable of the murder. Giles, Xander, Willow and Cordelia had gone to break into the morgue check out the body, to see if it was even possible for Oz to have done it. Harry didn't think it would be that big a deal for them to break in as security probably wouldn't be that tight, who would want to break into a morgue anyway? That left Faith watching over Oz as it was the night of the full moon; Harry just hoped she wouldn't fall asleep as well.

"What's not to understand?" Harry asked. They both were trekking through a large wooded area. Buffy held a wooden stake in her hand whereas Harry kept his wand out at all times.

"I've been watching you…"

"Nice to know," Harry commented,

Buffy just scowled at Harry before continuing, "For the last few days you've been focusing on this Koas guy. Don't you want to get home?"

Harry nodded and looked to the ground, "Of course I do."

Buffy didn't want to let the issue lie and continued to press, "Isn't there anyone there that's going to be missing you. Your parents?"

Harry smiled slightly and the bittersweet memories the mention of his parents gave him. Even though he never met them, he had heard enough stories from Remus and Dumbledore about them that he felt like he knew them. "They're dead." He said simply. He turned and glanced at Buffy to see her recoil with a look of horror in her face.

"I'm so sorry." She said softly.

"Don't worry about it," Harry shrugged, "It wasn't your fault. Plus, they died a long time ago, during the first war."

"There were two wars?" Buffy asked with slightly widened eyes.

Harry paused, he hadn't meant to let that piece of information slip out, "Kind of, but the first war ended when I was one."

Again, Buffy was curious and didn't want to let the issue drop. "So how did…Voldemort…was it?" Harry nodded, "How did Voldemort get defeated first time round then?"

Harry sighed and ran his hands through his hair, "Voldemort killed my parents." He said simply, he continuing speaking before Buffy had the chance to apologize, "A prophecy had been made a short time before, basically saying that the one with the power to defeat him had been born. Voldemort didn't hear the whole prophecy, only part of it, so he didn't know that the child would have _the power the dark lord knows not._" Harry said using air quotations, "Anyway, it could have been two children, me or a friend of mine. For whatever reason, he chose me, attacked my house, killed my parents and tried to kill me. Only the spell he used rebounded and hit him instead."

"And he only survived because of those…horcrux…things…" Buffy nodded in understanding.

"Yeah," Harry smiled, happy that she remembered what he had told her before, "Long story short, he regained his body about three years ago and the war started." It was only when Harry looked back at Buffy he saw the strange way she was looking at him. It was probably only now that Buffy was realizing how similar there world's, their fates were.

"Why are you here Harry?" Buffy asked after a few moments silence.

"Because I got dragged from my own world into this one," Harry said before throwing her a strange look, "Haven't you been paying attention?"

"Not that," Buffy said, shaking her head, "Why are you _here_?" she repeated, "In this forest with me, looking for this creature. You've already fought and won your own war, why are you still fighting?"

Harry sighed, that was a hell of a question. She was right though; he had fought and won his war. Why was he still fighting? He didn't have too any more, in fact, if he wanted, he could settle down here, never bother about going home and live that normal life that he's always craved.

Harry hesitated for a second before he answered the question, "All my life, I've craved for a normal life. A life without the constant danger and the life or death situations."

By now, the two had stopped walking and were standing still. "So why don't you?" Buffy asked softly.

Harry found it weird how personal this conversation was getting, but found it even stranger that he felt comfortable talking about with her. Maybe it was because her life had been so similar to him, who knew? "Think about it, if there are two worlds, there are likely to be lots of different ones, maybe even millions; who knows? The point is in all the worlds, I land in the one with the Slayer. I don't just land in any town in the world; I landed in Sunnydale, home of the Hellmouth. That's a really big coincidence." Buffy nodded, agreeing with him, "I'm just getting this overwhelming feeling that there's a reason I'm here. That there's something I have to do here, you know?" Buffy was about to answer, but before she could, Harry noticed a figure approaching Buffy from behind at an incredible speed. "Move!" he yelled.

Without wasting time to take a look behind her, Buffy dropped to the ground and rolled away. Unfortunately for Harry, the figure kept on running and before Harry had a chance to get a spell off, the figure slammed into Harry and sent him flying backwards and Harry fell to the ground. The figure turned and pounced on Buffy, it bared its sharp teeth and began to try and attack Buffy.

Buffy, being the slayer was no weakling though and was able to fight off the figure and kick it of her. The figure fell back and was about to leap onto Buffy again but Harry was back on his feet and held his wand out in front of him.

_Reducto!_

He thought. He watched as the red light slammed into the figure and it flew back into a large tree behind it and slumped down to the ground. Without taking his eyes off the figure, Harry helped Buffy up to her feet. Harry held the wand out in front of him and was about to stun the attacker.

"Harry!" Buffy yelled out, "Stop!" she grabbed Harry's arm and pointed his wand down toward the ground.

"What?" He asked, the stunner was still on the tip of his tongue.

Buffy didn't even look at him, her eyes had widened at the sight of the attacker. "That's Angel." She muttered, although it was loud enough for Harry to hear.

"Angel?" Harry questioned, once again he was utterly confused. "Didn't you kill him?"

Buffy was barely listening to him as she walked forward and knelt down next to the injured body of Angel. "I did." She answered.

Harry dropped his wand to his side and sighed. "Well obviously you didn't do a very good job."

***

**A/N Thanks for reading. I'm not really happy with this chapter, it feels like a bit of a filler to me, but oh well. Please review and let me know what you think. Expect an update in the next week or so.**


	8. Conflicting Emotions

**A/ N Thanks once again for all the reviews on the last chapter. One thing I would like to say is that if you're going to review with criticism, that's fine, I always love to know what you really think, but being rude and quite frankly cruel is a whole other matter. I'm only actually talking about one review, an anonymous reviewer named Soom who said and I quote, ****"I should go and kill myself." Comments like that only make you look immature and quite frankly, stupid. Anyway, enough of the bad news, thanks once again to Apocalypse Thou for beta-reading this chapter. Without further delay let's get on with the show. **

"_Harry!" Buffy yelled out, "Stop!" she grabbed Harry's arm and pointed his wand down toward the ground._

"_What?" He asked, the stunner was still on the tip of his tongue. _

_Buffy didn't even look at him, her eyes had widened at the sight of the attacker. "That's Angel." She muttered, although it was loud enough for Harry to hear. _

"_Angel?" Harry questioned, once again he was utterly confused. "Didn't you kill him?"_

_Buffy was barely listening to him as she walked forward and knelt down next to the injured body of Angel. "I did." She answered. _

_Harry dropped his wand to his side and sighed. "Well obviously you didn't do a very good job."_

_***_

**Chapter 8: Conflicting Emotions. **

Harry watched from afar as Buffy knelt by the unconscious vampire. He was noticing a pattern here in Sunnydale, about people coming back from the dead. To be fair, there was a chance that it wasn't just Sunnydale, but this entire world. Harry did have theories. He knew that if this world and his own world existed, then there was likely to be thousands, maybe even an infinite of parallel worlds Could it be possible that the barriers between life and death were weaker in this world than in his? Looking at the evidence, with Buffy and now Angel both having returned from the dead and Harry never hearing of anyone (besides Voldemort) doing such a thing in his own world, then it seemed so.

Pulling out of his thoughts, he stood awkwardly and watched Buffy. Her back was too him, so he could not see her face or read her emotions. He could only imagine what he would be like if someone he had loved returned from the dead, even if it was in such an animalistic way. He watched as Buffy stood up suddenly, her back still to him. She began to speak. "Come on, we have to take him to the mansion," she stated, leaving no room for argument.

He didn't move and watched silently as Buffy grabbed one of Angel's arms and dragged him back to his feet. She threw one of Angel's arms over her shoulder. "Buffy…" Harry said, trailing off as Buffy spoke again.

"What are you waiting for?" she said, turning around and facing him for the first time with an expectant look in her eyes. "Give me a hand."

"Buffy…" Harry tried again, but The Slayer didn't seem to want to hear whatever Harry had to say and just continued to speak.

"You take his left side and I'll take his right," she instructed as she began to walk back over to Angel. Before she could, Harry grabbed onto her wrist and turned her around so she was facing him. "What?" she asked fiercely while pulling her hand.

Harry sighed; hating the fact that it was him that had to do this. "Buffy," he began softly, "Isn't this the same Angel that killed innocent people, tortured Giles and then used the demon Acathla to try and get the world sucked into hell?" He finished rather bluntly, but then again, dealing with emotions had never been his strong point.

Harry watched the conflicting emotions in her eyes; first he saw anger and rage before it turned into understanding. Buffy sighed, "He's not…he's not evil anymore." She forced out, "Okay?"

"He just tried to kill us!" Harry shot back,

"He didn't mean it he just…" Buffy stopped and took a deep calming breath. She glanced behind her to see that Angel was stirring, but still wasn't awake. "Just before he tried to waken Acathla, Willow tried this spell to give him back his soul, it worked at the last second…but…but it was too late…the portal was already open and only Angel's blood could stop it." She admitted, staring at the ground.

Harry was conflicted. No, conflicted wasn't the right world. It was more like he was in inner turmoil. He understood Buffy and what she going through, because if he was in her position he would want to do everything he could for Angel as well, but he wasn't in her position; he was neutral. If spending all those years dealing with Dumbledore's "for the greater good," half truth's and manipulations, he now understood that sometimes you had to put the fate of the world over personal happiness. If anybody understood that, Harry did. If Angel was still evil, and they let him get away and he began killing again, Harry wasn't sure he would be able to forgive himself and he knew for a fact that Buffy would be consumed with guilt.

His thoughts must have been showing on his face because Buffy's eyes narrowed and she turned away from him and stomped back over to Angel. Before she reached Angel she turned back and faced him with icy eyes. "I'm taking Angel to the mansion," she stated, not giving Harry any chance to argue. "If you're not going to help me…then…you may as well just go." Without giving Harry a chance to say anything else, Buffy turned around and made her way back over to Angel. She knelt in front of him and tried to get Angel to his feet. The vampire chose that moment to wake up though and Angel wrapped his hands around Buffy's neck with incredible speed and began to choke her while hissing in an animalistic manner.

_Stupefy!_

The red light struck Angel in his chest and he fell back against the tree, unconscious once more. Buffy gasped and removed Angel's hands from her neck before stepping back. "Did you…"

"He's not dead," Harry assured, "Just stunned."

Buffy turned toward Harry once more, "What does that mean?"

Harry glanced from Buffy to Angel before making a decision, probably not the right one, but a decision all the same. "It means he will wake up perfectly fine in a little while," he explained. He heard Buffy's sigh of relief and he spoke again before she had a chance to say anything, "Which means we should take him to wherever you want to take him before he has a chance to wake up." Without saying anything, Buffy gave Harry a grateful look before turning around and trying to lift up Angel again. "Hang on," Harry said as he flicked his wand once more. Angel began to float in mid air. "Which way?"

Buffy just pointed and Harry began to walk before she put a hand on his arm and stopped him, "Thank you," she said honestly.

Harry shook his head, "Don't thank me yet."

***

They Angel back to the mansion in silence, partly because Buffy was deep in thought about the whole Angel still being alive thing and partly because it was taking all of Harry's concentration to keep Angel in the air. Usually, back in his world this sort of thing would have been nothing, but in this world, even the smallest amount of magic took extra effort and concentration.

When they eventually reached the mansion, Harry could honestly say he wasn't surprised by its appearance. The dark, dinginess of the building screamed _vampire_. All the windows in the house was bordering up, blocking all natural light from streaming into room, which was understandable considering Angel was a vampire.

As soon as they had entered the mansion, Buffy grabbed a chain that was coincidently lying around and chained Angel to a far wall. She did this just in time though as Angel started to stir and began to show signs of waking up from Harry's Stunner. Harry stood back and watched rather awkwardly as Buffy knelt beside him. She seemed to forget Harry was still there and walked into a joining room, retrieving a wet cloth before using it to wipe away some excess sweat of Angel's forehead.

Harry watched her with a small smile on his face. He had never had the chance to do this, to care for someone as much as Buffy obviously did for Angel. Sure, he loved people. He loved Ron, Neville, Ginny, Remus and the rest of the Weasley's. He loved the people that he had lost, his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore and Hermione. Even though he had people that he loved, he had never been in love. Sure, he had had a few girlfriend's here and there as he found that having someone that he could relax around and have fun with usually relived some of the stress of war, but he had never had that one person that completed him.

Harry shook away his unwelcome thoughts; he had other things that he needed to concentrate on now. He watched as Buffy stepped away from Angel and stood beside him. She crossed her arms over her chest and continued to stare at Angel with an emotion in his eyes that Harry couldn't read. Just then, Angel's eyes snapped open. With one look at the chains, the vampire began hissing and growling in a savage attempt to break free.

"Well," Harry said, as he watched Angel struggle against the chains, "I can see why you like him." Buffy didn't react to Harry's unhelpful comment and instead watched Angel fight against the chains. Harry turned his head and now was able to see the guilt and regret swimming in her eyes. Knowing that she didn't want sympathy, Harry turned back and faced Angel once more. "I'm guessing he wasn't always like this."

Buffy simply shook her head. She was silent, for several moments before she spoke again, "Time passes differently in hell," she said simply. She paused. "Giles once told me that anybody who broke out of hell would simply become a…monster."

Harry nodded in understanding. That meant that even if Angel had died only a short amount of time ago, he could have been in hell for a number of years. Anybody put under that amount of torture for that long would go insane.

"Any idea on how he escaped from hell?" Harry asked after a long silence.

"No." Buffy replied, keeping her answers short. Harry doubted that Angel could break out of hell. Even if he was one of the most powerful vampires on this world, Harry seriously doubted that this weakened, beast-like Angel could pull off something that could take so much power.

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair; this was beginning to be a really bad day. "I hate to be the one to have to say it Buffy, but, there's a chance that Angel could have…"

"Murdered the boy," Buffy finished for him. Her eyes narrowed slightly and her entire body seemed to tense. Other than that, there was no outward change in her demeanour, despite the fact Harry had just said that there was a chance the person she was in love with was a murderer. Then again, they all knew that Angel was a murderer. "I know," she finished, still staring at Angel. She suddenly turned around and took her eyes of Angel completely. She ignored his howls and screams and instead focused on Harry. "So what are we going to do?"

"About what?"

"Well you just said that there is a good chance that Angel killed that boy," Buffy said, clearly frustrated. "What are we going to do about this…situation?"

Harry took a second to think about it. "I think…" he paused and blew air from his pursed lips, "I think that we should tell Giles that he's alive."

"No," Buffy said quickly. "We can't tell Giles...or the others…they'll want to kill him."

Harry had to physically stop himself from shrugging, knowing that blasé reaction would only infuriate the Slayer. Instead, he reached forward and placed what he hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Buffy," he began softly, "We can't protect a known murderer."

Buffy stepped backwards and brushed his hand off her shoulder, causing Harry to sigh. "We don't know he killed that boy yet Harry."

"But we know he's killed before," Harry shot back. Seeing her eyes begin to narrow, Harry stepped backwards himself and held his hands up in a protective manner. "Look, Buffy, you're putting me in a difficult position here," he tried to explain, "What do you want me to do?"

Buffy didn't say anything for a moment; instead she just looked up at Harry. "And what do you want to do?" she asked quietly, "Do you want to kill him."

Harry hesitated, "Buffy…"

"Oh my god…" Buffy trailed off, her eyes flashing dangerously now as she looked up at Harry, "You do, don't you?" she questioned. Before Harry could even respond, Buffy spoke again, "You actually want to kill him."

Harry threw his hands into the air and groaned loudly, "Well what do you want me do to Buffy?" Harry said, his temper finally getting the better of him, "Offer him a glass of milk and a tray full of biscuits and hope that he doesn't try and kill me afterwards?"

"No," Buffy shot back, "I expected you, of all people _you_, to give Angel a chance."

"Please Buffy," Harry retorted as he turned away for a second. He turned back to Buffy and jabbed his finger in Angel's direction, "If that was anybody…_anybody_ else…you would want to kill him as well."

Buffy said nothing for a second and just glared at Harry. Seconds passed and Buffy's glare lessened and she spoke softly. "We aren't just talking about anybody. We are talking about the man I love."

Harry shook his head, "That doesn't change anything."

"Yes it does," Buffy said angrily, her voice was louder than usual and the fierce look in her eyes would have sent a lesser man running. "If this was you're friend…Hermione…we were talking about here, would you kill her again?" Harry stepped back slightly, feeling stung by her words. It must have shown on his face as the anger in Buffy's face lessened considerably, but it still held the grit and determination of before.

"That's different," Harry said eventually. His voice was quieter, almost a whisper, but it was said with such power that most other people would have backed up in fear. Buffy, wasn't anybody, she was the Slayer, and she stepped forward so she was closer to Harry, inches apart.

"Yes it is," Buffy said softly. She watched as Harry's face tightened slightly, but she stood her ground, "And you know it is."

The two stared at each other in a battle of wills, neither of them willing to look away first. It was tense; the silence was only broken by Angel's constant howls. The strength held by each was epitomised in their eyes. The power they both could wield, the desire to be the best they could be, the understanding…of each other…both of them, born in different worlds in the same situation; One of the same and two of a kind.

Harry looked away first.

He turned his head back in Angel's direction to see the vampire glaring at him with narrowed eyes. For a minute Angel disappeared, and his place was the annoying, bossy, eleven year old girl that he had met on the Hogwarts Express, seven years ago. Harry blinked, and back in her place was the vampire still hissing and growling.

Harry sighed, "We'll go back to the school and see what the others found on the body," he said eventually.

Buffy nodded, "And Angel?"

"Leave him here," Harry said, "He doesn't seem to be able to get out of those chains."

Buffy stared at him, arms crossed, and shook her head, "That's not what I meant."

Harry looked back up at her and sighed, "We'll see what the others found before deciding whether or not it's a good idea to tell them."

Buffy just nodded, realizing that this was the best outcome she could have hoped for. She turned and began to head for the door of the mansion. "Come on then," she said as she walked past Harry.

Harry reached out and grabbed her arm before she could walk past and spun her around so she was facing him. Buffy looked up at him, expecting to hear that he was planning to kill Angel if it turned out he did kill the boy, instead, Harry just held out one of his hands. "Hold my hand."

Buffy was baffled; after a heated debate like the one they had just had, he wanted him to hold his hand? Buffy shook her head and looked up to see Harry waggling his fingers, "What?" she asked eventually.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Just do it." Buffy shrugged, thinking that it could do no harm, and reached forward, placing her palm into his. It felt strangely comfortable. A perfect fit…

"This might feel a bit weird." Harry warned before he disapparated away from the mansion with Buffy holding on behind him.

***

Seconds later, they were outside Sunnydale High School. Upon landing, Buffy immediately ripped her hand away from Harry and tried to stop herself from vomiting. Harry watched with an amused smirk as Buffy keeled over with a hand over her mouth. A few seconds later, she stood back up and took a few controlled breaths. Apparently, she was convinced that she was not going to throw up any second.

Buffy took one look at Harry's smirk and she growled at him. "What the hell was that?"

"Apparition," Harry answered, "It's a magical mode of transportation."

"That's how you people get around?" Buffy questioned, Harry just nodded. "What's wrong with you people?"

Harry smiled for the first time in a while. "Don't blame me because you're not strong enough to take it," he taunted with a mocking grin.

Buffy ignored the taunt as she was still recovering from the feeling of Apparition. "That felt like…like…"

"Being pushed through a narrow tube?" Harry suggested, Buffy just nodded, "It's an acquired taste." Harry explained. "You get used to it after a while."

Buffy just shook her head and walked past him, entering the school. Without saying another word, Harry followed her into the school and into the library. When they finally reached the library, they found Oz, in his werewolf state, locked up in a cage and Faith, with her back turned to them, eyeing the werewolf in suspicion with a tranquilizer gun clutched in her hand. With Giles, Willow, Xander and Cordelia all going to examine the body, it was only the second Slayer that was free to watch Oz. Stepping into the room, Faith heard him and she spun around and pointed the gun at Harry, who just raised his hands in innocence. After seeing who it was, Faith sighed, rolled her eyes and allowed the gun to drop to her side.

"I was seconds away from shooting you." she warned with narrowed eyes, holding the gun up to prove her point. Harry shrugged, after the night he had just had, he couldn't really bring himself to care. He walked past Oz's cage and wasn't surprised at all to hear the werewolf growl at him before he threw himself down into a chair by the table. Instead of sitting, Buffy just leaned against the table, swimming in her own thoughts. "You know," Faith said, completely unaware of the tensions between the two, "You two, out alone in the forests in the middle of the night. Some might suspect that you two were participating in…extracurricular activities?"

Buffy and Harry both raised eyebrows and glanced at each other for a second, "No." they both said simultaneously.

"Why not?" Faith pressed, "I mean B your hot and Harry isn't exactly a bad looking guy…"

"Faith," Buffy interrupted, "You can go now you know. I'll watch Oz."

Losing all interest in the previous conversation, Faith scrunched up her face for a second, "You sure?"

"Yeah." Buffy nodded.

Shrugging, Faith handed Buffy the tranquilizer gun. Faith wasn't exactly going to complain at being allowed to get away early. "Alright then." She said as she began to walk out the room. She opened the door, "Later," she called out before the door slammed behind her. Once the door shut, Buffy dropped the gun on the table and walked up the few steps and began looking through the bookcases.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked after spending a couple of moments observing her. She didn't answer him and instead began pulling several books out and holding them under her arms. Knowing that he wasn't going to get an answer, Harry sighed. "You're looking up Acathla, aren't you?"

Buffy paused and turned to face Harry with a strange expression on her face. "How did you know that?"

"Because," Harry said, spinning in his chair so he was once again facing her, "If I was you, I would want to know how it was possible for Angel to be back too."

Buffy simply nodded and turned back to the bookcase and went back to looking for books. "I know what you think of Angel," she said without looking at him, "But while Angel's here, I'm going to do anything and everything I can to help him." She once again stopped looking for books and turned and faced him once more. Looking into his eyes with a piercing stare, she asked, "Problem?"

Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair. He turned in his chair again and saw Buffy watching him, waiting for an answer and readying herself for an argument. Harry stood up and began to walk up the steps. "Need a hand?" he asked.

Buffy's face scrunched up in confusion, "Why would you want to help Angel."

"Because you were right," Harry answered, Buffy still looked confused so Harry elaborated. "If this was Hermione, I would do the same thing you're doing." Buffy's gaze lingered on Harry for a second with an unreadable expression on her face. After a second she smiled and handed him a book.

"Thanks." She said as she walked past him and sat at the table before opening up a book and beginning to work.

***

The next morning before school started, Giles walked into the library to see Buffy with her head resting on the desk and three different books all opened up around her. She was obviously fast asleep. In the seat next to her was Harry, who was also asleep but instead he was leaning back in his chair with his head hanging off the edge. A book was left open in his lap and two other closed books on the table in front of him.

Giles had been too loud walking in and as Buffy was a light sleeper, she began to stir. After a few seconds, she lifted her head off the table and rubbed her eyes. She groaned loudly while stretching her arms and it was only then she saw Giles standing in front of her with a raised eyebrow.

"What are you doing here Giles?" Buffy asked as she tried to wake herself up, "It's late."

"No," Giles said shaking his head, "It's morning." Buffy narrowed her eyes and glanced toward the window were she could see the sunlight pouring through. Her mouth dropped into an O position as Giles dropped the books he was holding onto the table and walked behind her, peering over her shoulder at one of the books she had opened. "You're researching Acathla," he stated with a curious look.

Buffy hesitated, as she had no intention of telling her watcher that Angel was still alive, she had to come up with an excuse. "I had a dream last night about Angel coming back," she lied.

"A dream?" Giles questioned,

"A vivid dream, it just seemed so real," Buffy continued, "So I was just wondering…you know…if it were possible for him to come back."

"From hell?" Giles questioned, Buffy simply nodded. Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before sighing, "If Angel were to be able to escape from hell, which I'm not even sure if it's possible, that amount of torture to someone, it would drive them insane."

Buffy sighed, "I know," she said, her face dropped into one of sadness.

Deciding that it would be better to change the subject, Giles glanced at Harry, who was still fast asleep. "You asked Harry to help you?"

Buffy glanced at Harry and smiled slightly when she saw that he was still here and that he had a small amount of dribble falling down his chin. "He kind of…offered," she answered, "Anyway, I should probably wake him up now, huh?"

Giles nodded, "That might be a good idea." Buffy smiled and reached out and grabbed Harry's arm before gently shaking him. It was enough to wake Harry up though and disorientated, Harry fell backwards in the chair and landed on a heap on the floor.

"Ouch," Harry muttered while on the floor. Looking up at the two amused faces, Harry hurried back to his feet and ran a hand through his hair. "What time is it?" Harry asked after seeing the sunlight.

"About five to eight," Giles answered.

Harry nodded, scowling slightly, "Giles, I know I'm supposed to be working for you, but do you mind if I go back to the motel and have a shower and change my clothes? I was kind of busy helping out Buffy last night."

Giles nodded, "Sure."

Harry turned and smiled at Buffy, "Later Buff," before he turned and disappeared on the spot.

"So," Giles said after Harry had apparated away, "Did you end up finding anything interesting?"

***

Harry arrived back in the library later on that day. Once there, he spent the day continuing to read up on both Koas and possible routes home with only minor interruptions from Giles. After the school day had ended, Harry took a quick walk to a nearby shop to get something to eat and when he returned, he was surprised to see everybody there, well, everybody minus Oz. He strolled across the library and flopped down into a seat next to Cordelia, and taking in everyone's serious expressions, he asked, "What's going on?"

Buffy cleared her throat and answered, "I just found the school counselor dead," she said seriously.

Harry leaned forward in his chair, "Dead?"

"Not just dead," Buffy said, "Mauled, like the body we found yesterday, but the difference is that this murder was committed during the day time."

Harry nodded and allowed a small smile to cross his face, despite the serious nature of the topics being discussed, "So it couldn't have been Oz." He noticed that Willow seemed to be struggling to hide her delight at hearing that it wasn't Oz who killed the boy in the forest yesterday. His eyes locked with Buffy's for a split second, and at that moment Harry's thoughts mirrored Buffy's. _It means it couldn't have been __Angel either…_

"So we're not looking for a vampire." Giles stated, snapping Harry from his thoughts. He looked back at the older man who was rubbing his chin in thought. "Any ideas on what else we could be fighting…"

"Whatever it is," Harry said, "It's in the school."

"Who knows how long it will take to kill again…" Willow said,

Buffy stood up and crossed her arms, "We need to find him guys."

"But how?" Xander asked.

Perfectly timed, Oz walked through the doors of the library with a determined look on his face. Willow jumped up from her seat and hugged her boyfriend tightly. "Oz! It wasn't you! You didn't kill that boy!" she squealed, her voice being muffled by Oz's chest.

Oz still looked unconvinced, "How do you know?"

"The school consoler was killed today," Buffy explained, "The body was mauled, just like the boy in the forest, but this time, the murder was committed in daylight." Harry smiled as he saw Oz looking visibly relieved, as if a great burden had been suddenly lifted of his shoulders; he noticed out of the corner of his Buffy also smiling at him, "It couldn't have been you," she finished off.

"Coincidence," Oz said after a few moments of silence, "I just saw Debbie outside looking seriously beaten up."

Buffy looked confused, "How beaten up?"

"_Black eye_ beaten up." Oz explained.

Buffy narrowed her eyes, "Do you really think Pete's capable of something like that?"

"Sorry," Harry interrupted, "Who are Debbie and Pete?"

"Friends of Scott," Buffy said absentmindedly, referring to her current boyfriend. "Do you really think he could have hit Debbie?"

Oz shrugged, "Maybe."

"If this boy is willing to attack his girlfriend," Giles said in thought, "Than maybe he could have killed the counselor and the boy in the forest."

Harry looked sceptical, "That's a little…out there…isn't it?"

Buffy shrugged, "It's the best lead we've got." She turned around and began to turn toward the door, "I say we go and find him and see if he knows anything." The others nodded and stood up before following Buffy toward the door.

"Wait, Oz!" Giles said, grabbing the teen werewolf by his arm and stopping him in his tracks, "It's getting close to nightfall. You're going to transform soon." Oz looked reluctant, but nodded, and walked back over to the table and sat back down.

"I'll stay with you," Willow offered as she wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

"No," Harry interrupted, "I'll stay. You guys know your way around this school a lot better than I do and considering I don't even know what he looks like…I may as well wait with Oz."

Buffy nodded, "Okay then." She said as the group, minus Oz and Harry left the library.

***

Ten minutes later, Harry and Oz were still in the library, sitting in silence. Harry was watching in sympathy as Oz was marching up and down, beginning to feel the pain of the transformation.

"Maybe you should…" Harry said slightly awkwardly, instead of finishing the sentence, he just pointed toward the cage on the other side of the room. Although he has done so in the past, Harry was in no mood to grapple with a werewolf.

Oz just nodded, "Yeah…you're probably right…" he murmured as he walked around the table and toward the table. Before he could, the door of the library flew open and a boy Harry had never seen before charged into the room with a murderous look in his eye.

"You!" he said, his eyes flashing dangerously with one finger outstretched in Oz's direction. He stepped forward dangerously but before he could get anywhere close to him, Harry stepped in between them with a grin on his face.

"Hey," he said in a false cheery tone, "You must be Pete."

Pete's eyes narrowed and he glared at Harry, "Out of my way," his looked at Harry up and down, "Librarian." He finished with a smirk.

"Wow," Harry muttered, mostly to himself, "I've been called a lot of insults in my time, but never librarian." He looked up to see Pete still glaring at him angrily, as if he was about to attack Harry there and then, "Oh, did you actually think I was going to move?"

"Harry…" Oz warned,

"In the cage Oz," Harry ordered, not taking his eyes off Pete for a second, "The moon will be out any second now." He smiled once more at Pete, "Now, maybe you can tell me what you want with my good friend Oz here, and I'll be glad to pass on a message."

Pete growled, he was beginning to sound more and more animalistic every second, "He was talking to my girl," he snarled, "And I'm going to kill him for it?"

Harry, completely unaffected by the Pete, continued to taunt him, "Kill him? Really?" he questioned, "Small thing like you, I doubt you could kill anything."

"You want to bet?" Pete said and a second later, he looked nothing like he had done before. His featured had grown more prominent and pointed. His eyes had narrowed and were now flashing a dangerous yellow. He bared his sharp teeth in an attempt to look even more threatening.

"Oh, now I'm scared." Harry said sarcastically, after not reacting to Pete's sudden transformation.

Pete growled before his mouth curved upwards into a smirk, "You should be." He hissed before he leaped forward, fully intent on breaking Harry's neck.

Seeing him coming, Harry lifted up his hand and used his magic to cover it in flames. Seeing this, Pete practically stopped in mid air and glanced at Harry's hand in fear. "What are you?" he whispered harshly.

"Me?" Harry asked, "I'm just a librarian. Now, if I was you, I would stay exactly where you are before this librarian turns you to ashes." He smirked at Pete one last time, "Got it?"

Just then, an inhuman scream pierced through the ears of both Harry and Pete. Turning around, Harry realized that the full moon was now up, and even worse, Oz didn't lock the cage. In front of his eyes he began to witness Oz's transformation into a werewolf. As his friend turned into a beast, Harry knew that he had to keep Oz away from anyone else for their own safety. Taking his attention of Pete proved to be a mistake though as he leaped on Harry and drove him into the table. The combined weight of the both of them was too much and the table collapsed, sending the two of them crashing to the floor. The inhuman Pete was strong and rolled over so he was on top of Harry. He grimaced as the inhuman Pete hissed and growled and tried to maul Harry. Harry was fighting with his life to keep Pete off of him, before he sent a burst of fire from his entire body, burning Pete and making him leap off Harry and jump back.

Harry scrambled up to his feet and immediately summoned two fireballs in his hands. Grinning, Harry taunted the inhuman Pete, "Bring it," he said before throwing one of the fireballs in Pete's direction, causing the monster drop to the ground to avoid it. Pete got back to his feet and glared at Harry, realizing that he didn't want to fight the young man, Pete fled the library before Harry could stop him.

He swore loudly as he got rid of the fireballs in his hand. Realizing that he was forgetting something, he turned to the cage to see that Oz was also gone, and his mouth dropped open in shock when he figured out that the werewolf must have escaped while he and Pete were fighting.

Harry cursed once more and punched the side of the cage in frustration. Just as his hand began to throb in pain, the library door opened once more and Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies walked in. Buffy took one look at the open cage, the turned over table and Harry's roughed up appearance before her mouth curved into a frown. "What happened?"

Harry sighed, "Pete came in here, we fought, Oz transformed and they both escaped." He explained simply.

Buffy groaned and threw his hands into the air, "Great," she said sarcastically, "Now we have a murderer and a werewolf loose in the school."

"Then we should stop moaning about it and do something about it," Harry stated, he kicked the floored table to the side and picked up the tranquilizer gun from last night, which had been left on the table and passed it to Faith. "You guys go after Oz." he said seriously, "Me and Buffy will go after Pete."

Xander looked confused, "You and Buffy?"

Harry just raised an eyebrow, "Problem?"

"No." Buffy interrupted, "The plan works. Let's get started before Oz and Pete get off of the school grounds." Everyone nodded, and Faith, armed with the tranquilizer gun beneath one arm, marched out of the door, behind her followed Giles, Xander and Willow. Buffy watched them leave before turning back to Harry, "Any idea on where Pete went?"

"No," Harry said in thought, "But look at this, he cut himself," he added kneeling down and pointed toward a small drop of blood that was lying on the edge of the table. He stood back up and saw the drops of blood that was forming a trail out of the door. He looked up and saw that Buffy had also seen the trail of blood. "Follow the blood?" he suggested.

Buffy nodded, "Lead the way," she said, waving her arm in the direction of the door. Harry nodded and set off in a jog as they followed the blood trail, hoping that the monstrous Pete would be at the end of it.

***

They had been following the blood in the school for about five minutes. Eventually, the trail led them to the school basement. Harry had never been to this part of the school before and because of this he was on constant alert, not knowing what he would find. It was when he heard Buffy gasp that he spun around, creating a fireball in one hand and holding it out to defend himself. Instead, he saw Buffy leaning over the body of a dead girl, about their age, who looked like she had been mauled to death. There was blood running down the side of her face, her body was stiff and tense and her lifeless eyes were wide open.

"Debbie…" he heard Buffy whisper sadly. Harry knew that Pete must have gotten to his girlfriend before any of them could get to him first.

Sighing heavily, Harry placed a hand on Buffy shoulder. "Buffy," he said seriously, "We have to keep going."

Buffy sniffled a little before looking up at Harry with a determined expression on her face and nodded. She stood up and continued to follow the trail of blood. Silently, Harry followed.

It wasn't long until the trail had led them outside to the front of the school. There, they saw Pete with his back to them as he calmly strolled off the school site. Not wanting to let him get away, Harry produced a small fireball in his hands and threw it at the boy. He knew that it wouldn't do any damage; he just wanted to let him know that they were here. It worked and as soon as the fireball hit, Pete stumbled forward slightly and turned and glared at Harry and Buffy. Remembering how his last fight with Pete went; Harry felt more comfortable drawing his wand, no matter how strangely his magic was acting. Buffy just fell into a regular fighting stance.

Before Harry, Buffy or even Pete for that matter could attack; Harry heard another howl in the distance. Turning, Harry's eyes widened in shock as he saw the animalistic figure of Angel standing on the rooftop.

"What the…" Harry muttered, wondering how Angel had broken free of those chains they had used to lock him up in the mansion. Apparently, Angel was stronger than Harry had given him credit for.

"Angel…" Buffy whispered, just as shocked by the appearance of the vampire as Harry was. Before either of them could think of doing something, Angel jumped off the rooftop with a howl. The vampire dropped down while glaring at Harry and landed on top of the boy who lived, trying his best to scratch, bite or generally hurt Harry. Buffy couldn't help out as at that moment, Pete had decided to attack Buffy and she found herself having to fight for her life against Pete.

The inhuman Pete attacked furiously, but without any sort of skill. As he attacked her, Buffy almost wondered how this attacker had gotten the better of Harry. He fought recklessly, without any sort of technique. Buffy assumed that Harry most have been caught off-guard. That didn't stop Pete from being dangerous though as his increased strength plus the anger he seemed to possess made Buffy fight with caution against him, mostly trying to avoid his lunges.

Meanwhile, Harry was wondering how he had managed to get himself in the same situation twice in about twenty minutes. Once again he was pinned to the floor as a viscous creature tried to bite him. He had dropped his wand once Angel had landed on him, meaning that magic was a no go. Instead, he used the same trick he had used earlier and released a small bout of fire from his body. Unfortunately, Angel seemed to be unaffected and remained hell bent on killing Harry. Not having much over choice, Harry lifted his knee and rammed it into Angel's groin, making the vampire fall backwards. Harry scrambled back to his feet but as soon as he did this, Angel rammed into him once more, sending them both tumbling back to the ground, wrestling for dominance. It was times like these Harry was glad for his magically increased speed and strength, because if it wasn't for it he wouldn't have stood a chance against this Angel.

Harry was able to get on top of Angel during their wrestling match on the ground. Harry was able to drive his knee into Angel's stomach and when the vampire leaned up to try and push him off, Harry hit him with a strong right hand, sending him sprawled back out on the floor. Thinking that he had Angel beat for the moment; Harry got back to his feet and searched the ground with his eyes for his wand. Before he could find it, Angel shot up and grabbed Harry's legs and pulled them, making Harry land on his back once more. Angel jumped on top of Harry and pinned his arms down with his knees. Without having Harry being able to defend himself, Angel lowered his neck, readying himself to bite Harry.

Before he did, Angel stopped suddenly and turned his head and looked over to where Buffy was fighting Pete. Buffy was struggling, in the same position as Harry was, as Pete readied himself to kill the Slayer. All of a sudden, Angel jumped off of Harry and raced toward Pete, leaving Harry to sit up and watch him with confusion. Angel raced over to Pete and before the monster could even see Angel coming, the vampire grabbed his head and snapped his neck.

Harry scrambled up to his feet and watched with a small amount of shock as the now dead body of Pete fell to the ground. Finding his wand quickly, he raced over to Angel and Buffy and stood beside Buffy, pointing his wand at Angel, ready to kill him at a moment's notice.

Angel wasn't paying any attention to Harry though and instead was staring at Buffy. Harry noticed that Angel looked a lot more human than he had before. "Buffy…" the vampire whispered, before to the shock of Harry, he fell to the floor and broke down in tears. Buffy immediately rushed forward and embraced him in a hug and Harry saw a tear fall from the Slayer's eyes.

Buffy suddenly looked up at Harry and saw his wand still outstretched, pointing toward Angel. "Harry," she whispered, her voice half pleading. Harry hesitated for a second, before taking one last look at Buffy and lowering his wand. Buffy smiled at him before turning back to Angel. Feeling out of place, Harry tucked his wand into his pockets and walked back into the school, wondering if the others had been able to sedate Oz.

***

The next day Harry learnt that Oz had been shot with a tranquilizer dart without any real trouble and the werewolf had slept through the night. Giles had also explained to the group that he had discovered that Pete had concocted a potion containing steroids to make him stronger. Giles also said the hellmouth probably mutated it and turned him into the monster he was. Later on that day, Willow and Xander were both in lessons and Giles was off in some meeting with Principal Snyder, leaving Harry and Buffy alone in the library. They both sat in silence for a while, Buffy was trying to finish some homework and Harry was pretending to read a book.

"So…" Harry said, closing the book and facing Buffy, "How is he?"

Buffy looked up at him, not needing to ask who he was talking about, "Better," she answered after a few seconds, "He slept through the night last night without having to be chained to the wall."

"That's good," Harry commented,

Buffy tried to go back to her work but threw her pen down after a few seconds and looked back up at Harry with a slight look of desperation on her face, "Harry, you can't tell…"

"The others…" Harry finished, "I know." He nodded, "Don't worry, I won't tell them anything until you think you're ready."

Buffy smiled at Harry sincerely, "Thank you Harry."

Harry waved it off flippantly, "It was nothing."

"No it was something," Buffy insisted, "You went against your own instincts and didn't kill Angel. I just wanted you to know how grateful I am."

Harry just nodded and tried to hide his small smile. "No problem Buffy." Their eyes locked once more from across the room, causing Harry to once more notice she really did have nice eyes.

The bell rang, causing Buffy to groan and stuff her books back into her bag. "See you later Harry." Harry gave her another half smile and a semi wave as Buffy began to walk past him. She paused before she got to the door and turned and walked back to Harry. Standing in front of him, Buffy did something she had never done before, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. Harry closed his eyes and smiled and patted her back awkwardly before she let go and walked out of the library, leaving him alone in the library.

"How the mighty have fallen." A voice said from across the room. Harry span in his chair to see Koas standing there, leaning against the wall casually. He looked exactly the same as the last time Harry had seen him, long black hair, a curved scar on the side of his face and the two swords hanging on his back. "Only you could have gone from being the world's saviour to lusting after girls in a library."

"I was not lus…" Harry paused and shook his head, "How did you get in here?"

Koas shrugged, "Pretty easily."

"Okay then," Harry said, standing up and summoning a fireball in his hand, in case he had to defend himself at any second, "And how do you know anything about me?"

Koas grinned, "Because we are so similar, Harry Potter, more similar than you will ever know."

Harry shook his head at Koas' vague answers, "Well, since you know so much about me, maybe I should get to know you a little better."

"What do you want to know?" Koas asked.

Harry shrugged, "Let's start with what you want with me."

"I already told you," Koas answered, "You're help."

"Well you haven't exactly asked politely for my help, have you?" Harry said.

"I haven't threatened you either," Koas retorted, "In fact, I can't recall me ever being anything but courteous to you."

Harry snorted, "Except for the whole _evil_ vibe you're giving off right now."

"Oh, I'm not evil Harry." Koas assured,.

"You look that way to me." Harry retorted.

"Well maybe that's your own issues with trusting people." Koas shot back with a confident grinned wiped across his face.

Harry's eyes narrowed and he glared at Koas for a second, contemplating whether or not it would be a good idea to attack him. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice losing all amusement.

Koas grinned and pushed himself of the wall he was leaning on, "I just want to get you home."

"Why?" Harry questioned, not budging as Koas began to walk forward. "What's in it for you?"

Koas laughed, "Nothing that's going to give you any grief, as long as you cooperate." Harry immediately tensed up and used his fee hand to summon a second fireball and readied himself to attack. Seeing that he had angered Harry, Koas just laughed and stepped back with his hands in the air. "Well, I can see that you're in no mood to talk right now so I'll just…" Deciding not to wait any longer, Harry threw one of the fireballs in Koas' direction.

Harry's eyes widened in shock when he saw Koas shimmer out of sight and watched the fireball hit the empty space Koas had previously stood. A second later, Harry felt a cold, metal object on his neck. He lowered his eyes to see a sharp silver sword, resting against his neck. Turning his head, he could see Koas' smiling face behind him.

"We'll see each other again soon Harry," Koas said, before laughing one more time, "Count on that." And with that, the mysterious Koas was gone, leaving Harry once again alone, confused and with a small cut on his neck.


End file.
